To my husband, on Mother’s Day.

Blogged on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 by Rachael. Filed in Blog365, Philosophical.

Dear Troy,

Everyone is expecting a funny joke now about how you’re the mom around here, or something, but I have to disappoint them because this is actually a SERIOUS letter.  VERY SERIOUS.  Mostly.

I am writing you on Mother’s Day because you make my life better, and as a result, I’m a better person and a better mom.

You’ve been here with me for more than a year now, and even though we’ve only been married for a few weeks, it feels like you have been by my side for so much longer than that.  You are my rock, my best friend; the strong arms that hold me when I cry, the blue eyes that say I love you, the generous spirit that brings me coffee in the morning before I even remember I want it.  (Which is saying something, you know, darling, because I LOVE my caffeine!)

My kids are now our kids, not just because we got married, but because you treat them like they belong to you.  You agonize over how best to raise them, you worry when you think you might have messed something up, you carry them from the car to their bed without waking them up.  We’ve taken them to the park, to the movies, to restaurants.  We’ve been complimented on their behavior.  We’ve been horrified at their tantrums when they flare up in public, and we’ve dealt with it together, with as much peace and dignity as you can garner when small people are FREAKING OUT.

You back me up, you stick by me.  You’re my knight in shining armor and my bad boy fantasy, all at the same time.  You love me for who I actually am, which is shocking, because you actually KNOW a lot of who I really am.  Right now you’re making hamburgers for all of us to eat for dinner, and I’m supposed to come and make the baked beans, but I just had a few more words to write so I’m almost done, I promise.

I love that we cook together and I love that we take walks and hold hands.  I hate that we fight and that we blow things out of proportion, but that’s the kind of people we are, and with each argument we learn better how not to hurt each other quite so much next time.  You’re the only person I have ever been able to argue with and still know deep in my soul that I love you more than I have ever loved any man before.

Whenever we have our own baby - and I know this is a sad subject for us still, because it wasn’t so very long ago that we lost a pregnancy - that child will have awesome parents, just like our Lissie, Joey, and Ian already have.  I could not love my family more than I do now, except that tomorrow I will love it even more, because that’s what love does.  It just keeps expanding and gathering more into itself and getting better and better with time.

With all my heart, I love you.  Happy Mother’s Day to us!

Taking it (sort of) easy. Okay, not really.

Blogged on Friday, May 9th, 2008 by Rachael. Filed in Blog365, Contradictory, Philosophical.

The last thing I posted was a whiny rant about how hard I work. And it’s true. I work really hard and sometimes it feels like I don’t get enough rest (because I don’t) in between all the working.

The main reason for that is that one of the jobs I have is not actually web design - it’s a pay-the-bills kind of job, but sadly it doesn’t pay much. I still have it because it’s regular. However, the more my web design business expands (like the way it has in the past three weeks), the less time I have to devote to the lesser-paying job, and the more stressed out and explode-y I feel about everything.

I don’t want to give it up because it seems like that’s a stupid thing to do. But at the same time, to really give my business the opportunity it needs to grow like it wants to, I have to have the time to design and develop and email clients back and forth. The lesser-paying job does not allow me to multitask because it is meant to be a time-sensitive, faster-the-better type of thing. I’m good at it because I can do things REALLY fast when I catch the pattern. But, again, it’s beginning to interfere with my other job, the one that makes my heart sing, the one that seems as natural as eating Doritos instead of dinner, the one that makes me feel like NOW I know what I’m supposed to be doing here.

Also, the more time I spend on web design clients, the less time I have during each week for the other job, which actually makes BOTH jobs suffer.  And yet, every week, I try to make it work.  I try to come up with more hours than there really are so that I don’t have to let anyone down.

So I have a dilemma. Do I keep the lesser-paying job, fighting with my time so that I can give my business as much of my other time as I possibly can, or do I just work with incredibly awesome clients all day instead?  What to do, what to do.

Any advice?

I have sisters

Blogged on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 by Rachael. Filed in Blog365, Holidays, Philosophical.

I have two sisters who weren’t born from the same mom, and who didn’t grow up with me.

Nevertheless, they are my sisters as surely as if they were blood of my blood.

Lithie and Sarie are my sisters.  And today, it’s Sarie’s birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, sister of mine!  I love you! May your day be bright and lovely, and may you be covered in a thousand butterfly kisses.  I wish I was there to hug you and give you cake.  *MWAH*

Tired.

Blogged on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 by Rachael. Filed in Blog365, Complaint, Emo, Philosophical.

Troy just posted something short on his new blog, and it says what I can’t quite say sometimes.

This is why we’re so stressed sometimes (most of the time), and this is why I work so hard.  Believe me, I’m happy to work so hard.  I value being a productive person for my family.  I begrudge none of my time spent working, and I begrudge nothing I can give them.

But there is, so far, only me.  And not for lack of trying.  It’s tiring.

Today I just want to sleep.  I want to take a vacation.  I want to play with my kids from before breakfast until past bedtime.  I want to read stories and get grass-stains on my knees and run until my hair sticks out in all different directions.

But I have to go on working.

AT&T: EPIC FAIL.

Blogged on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 by Rachael. Filed in Blog365, Complaint, Contradictory.

I have AT&T for phone service, and I get my high-octane caffeinated DSL through this phone line (although sometimes it’s like the internet’s on decaf, because of the slowness). We used to have cell phones for long distance and any other random calling or texting we wanted to do, but since January we’ve used only Skype for outgoing calls that aren’t local.

However, for some reason (and maybe it’s my at-times-decaffeinated internet that’s to blame), Skype has been letting me down recently, and while I can hear who I’m calling - THEY CAN’T HEAR ME. Possibly this is a FAIL on the part of my headset, or it’s a FAIL for Skype.

At any rate, it seemed like now was a good time to add some cheap long distance to the local plan. However, there’s a little 22.95 charge that’s ‘in dispute’ on my account because when I ordered the super-high-octane (but only slightly more expensive) DSL service in January, they promptly lost my order and had to end up shipping my router overnight about a month later. At the time, the helpful service person told me that I would not be charged for shipping.

Of course, LIE! EPIC FAIL LIE! I was charged for the shipping. I already have to buy the router and pay the difference for the extra-special DSL I wanted, but I sure as hell was not okay with paying overnight shipping for a mistake I didn’t make.

So I called them, of course, and they were too busy to answer the phone. No, really. When their ‘call volume’ is too high, their phone system says, sorry, kthxbai! Try the internet! I went online and submitted a help ticket thingy, and got a response back pretty quickly via email that the disputed charge would be taken off within a few months.

It’s still there, however, even though I have paid up every other penny I owed them. And because it’s hanging about on my account, making it look like I’m a non-debt-paying internet-hogging sleazebag, I can’t order long distance online. So I called them.

First I have to tell the automated line what I want:

WELCOME TO AT&T!

(pause)

(overly cheerful phone-answering robot smartly deduces that the phone I’m calling from is the phone on my account)

TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE CALLING ABOUT TODAY! DO YOU WANT… TO PAY YOUR BILL? … NEW PHONE SERVICE? … (pause)

So I tell it that I want TO GET LONG DISTANCE, because if you don’t speak in BOLD ALL CAPS it tells you kindly and firmly that it cannot understand what you want, can you repeat yourself please? Bloody sarcastic phone robot.

The robot puts me through to customer service, which kindly informs me that due to an extremely high call volume, nobody can answer my call. So I should try the internet! Kthxbai!

I try the internet. Internet says: Due to a technical difficulty, we cannot process your order at this time. Please call Customer Service at (the number I just called).

EPIC FAIL, AT&T. BIG FUCKING RETARDED EPIC FAIL. Also, I hate you.

Mwah! Mwah!

Blogged on Monday, April 28th, 2008 by Rachael. Filed in Blog365, Randomness.

This is just a (very quick) post to say that I love you all for reading my GWIDLW (Guess what I did last weekend) series, and leaving comments, and that I’ve been REALLY BUSY with work the past several days.

Well, working and also being outside a little bit, and attending my kids’ Patriotic Music performance earlier this evening, but mostly WORKING. I even upgraded this guy’s Wordpress installation!

If any of you need that done - and you either don’t have time, don’t want to do it yourself, or would just rather someone else take the blame when it’s screwed up - give me a holler! I’ll make sure it’s working before I leave you with it, I promise. :)

Now back to work before I fall asleep at this here keyboard.