January 30th, 2012 by Kateastrophe

Today I was reminiscing about the days when I used to have tons to blog about and tons of comments.  It’s completely my fault that all went away but today I realized I miss it!  I have made SO many cool friends blogging over the years and sometimes when I think back to when I actually “met” them, I can’t believe how much time has passed!

For example, back when I first met Molly, she wasn’t even engaged, let alone married with a baby and #2 on the way!!  And Angela was still living in Seattle and had only been married like, a year.  Now she and Colby are moving to Germany, doing In Vitro next month (sticky baby dust your way, love!) and coming up on their fifth anniversary!  My real life best friend Anne aka Brillig who was my partner in Soap Opera Sunday crime (yeah, I never did finish that one loooooooooong story.  Sorry guys.) doesn’t even HAVE a blog anymore.  I never thought the day would come!   Luisa had a baby who is now almost FOUR!!! There are tons more I want to name but it would seriously take me all day.  Lots of love and marriage and babies and new jobs and big changes and so maybe great people I’ve met.  I love that part of blogging.

And then there’s my life.  Since I started blogging waaaaaayyy back in 2006, just the day after our first anniversary, Matt and I have done and been through and experienced SO MUCH!  I’m going to bullet this list because HOLY CRAP there’s a lot!

• Celebrated five (soon to be six) more anniversaries
• Built a house
• Sold a house (gross)
• Moved (gross)
• Yearly family vacations to the sand dunes
• Yearly (AMAZING) girls trips
• Losses of friends (sad)
• My introduction to fine dining and subsequent food snobbery
• A trip to China
• A trip to Puerto Vallarta
• Countless trips to California with a couple Disneyland trips thrown in
• One job change and two promotions for Matt
• A huge promotion, a company acquisition, two job changes, a job loss and a contracting job for me
• A lead role in two musicals
• Starting to teach voice lessons
• A girls trip to Disneyworld
• Acquired a new sister (technically sister-in-law but who needs to get technical!?  She’s my SISTER!)
• The birth of NUMEROUS babies to my besties (I’m trying to count.  I think it’s something like 12?)
• Three pregnancies and subsequent miscarriages (boo)
• A new puppy!

I’m sure there’s a ton more given the plethora of posts between my three (!!) blog versions.  In spite of some downer moments, the last six years have been really good to me.  I’m pretty glad I started a blog because I’ll always have that fun stuff to look back on, and hopefully there’s years more to come!  Maybe at some point I’ll even get interesting again and return to my former blogging glory!!  Not likely, but I guess one never knows.

Thanks to those of you who  still read.  I know from my stats that there’s more of you than the comments show and I appreciate you coming back to make me feel like I’m at least a little bit interesting! I’ll try to step it up this year and see if I can make it worth your while!

January 20th, 2012 by Kateastrophe

So…owning a puppy.  It’s a love/hate/love/hate/love/love thing.  He is so freaking cute I want to carry him around in my pocket all the time, and quite frankly he’s small enough and loves the attention enough he probably wouldn’t mind one single bit.

We named him Dr. Watson and call him just Watson.  I think it will fit his personality as he grows up really well.  He’s so young he does all the normal puppy stuff but he’s showing signs of being loving, loyal and super duper feisty and stubborn.  Our first vet visit went great.  He weighs a whopping 2.72 lbs and other than the infected bite on his ear (courtesy of a feisty sibling the day before we picked him up) which is causing the ear to curl back instead of pointing up, he’s a healthy little guy.  He eats well, though I’ll be changing his food soon due to the fact that most dog normal dog food is made mostly of animal by-products and corn, both things that aren’t so good for him, or really any dog for that matter.  {Stepping down from soapbox now}

As I said, he’s oh so snuggly.  From the moment we got him in the car to bring him home he snuggled up in his blanked (courtesy of Grandma and Grandpa Murphy, aka Matt’s parents) and went to sleep.  As soon as we were home he explored a little bit and then climbed onto me, nuzzled into my neck and went back to sleep.  So there’s that amazingly lovable side of him.

Then there’s his stubborn, snotty side that will look at me, run into his crate and pee, just to show me that while MOST dogs refuse to pee where they sleep, he is the exception to the rule and he’ll pee wherever he wants, thank you very much.  It shows up other places too.  For the first few days he couldn’t get inside fast enough after his bathroom break.  Yesterday, he discovered sun patches.  He was outside for almost an hour yesterday, absolutely refusing to come inside (without force) and just hanging out in the sun.  He discovered the same sun patches in the (before now) never explored living/dining room.  Now it’s his favorite place to go hang out on the warm carpet.  I’d let him stay there forever except for the fact that I find him sneaking off to mess up my carpet every time I turn my head.

As for the feisty side, it usually shows up at play time and is completely hilarious and appropriate, but it also shows up when it’s two in the morning and I just want to go back to sleep.  He would instantly fall asleep if I put him in his blanket in my lap but if I put him in his blanket in his crate suddenly he’s WIDE AWAKE and wants to play, which usually entails chasing my feet around and biting my toes, which actually hurts! As an example of the feisty, below is a video of him attacking a mag light.  Apologies for the length and for my horrible voice and laughter.

As you can see, he doesn’t really walk or run anywhere, he hops. This has been a constant since his first movement here at the house. Fortunately he gets more coordinated every day because at first he couldn’t take three steps without falling all over himself. We still have hilarious accidents involving walls, shower doors, sliding glass doors, nor realizing that when he scratches with one leg he really shouldn’t try to walk, and rolling off my shoulder in his sleep, doing a backflip on the way down. The good news is that he seems to be made of rubber and has yet to even wince when he falls or runs into something.

So there’s the puppy update.  We’re madly in love with him, though severely sleep deprived and walking around like zombies, but at least we’re zombies in love with the cutest dog ever.

January 3rd, 2012 by Kateastrophe

It’s the new year!  Thank freaking goodness!  I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it before but I have never been more ready for a new beginning than I am right now.

I realized as I started writing this that I should really include some pictures from our Christmas and New Year…but they’re at home and I’m not and so no pictures for now.  Maybe tonight I’ll do a post that’s entirely made up of pictures…hmmm interesting concept.

My birthday this year was really mellow and really nice.  It was a rough year for babysitters so there were only six people who were able to make it to my party, but it was actually really, really fun.  We sat around the table eating and talking and laughing until midnight, when we realized we had one minute to get out the noise makers and fake champagne, so we hurried and did that and then we played Minute to Win It games until almost two.  It. Was.  Hilarious.  Whoever came up with some of those games deserves a medal.  If I happen to do my picture post tonight I’ll also include a video of the Bobble Head game.  I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed that hard.   As for gifts, I got some really fun trinkets and games from friends and family, Matt’s parents got me the most awesome professional style popcorn popper  I’ve already used it like five times, just for myself.  It’s awesomsauce.  Finally, Matt dialed in with a sweet surprise of two day park hopper passes to Disneyland, which I am SO EXCITED about.  I love me some Disneyland.  All in all, my birthday was a huge hit and helped end a pretty crappy year on a really high note.

New Year’s Day was spent being extraordinarily lazy.  We woke up at eleven and then didn’t leave the couch until three at which point we decided we needed some food before crashing back on the couch until bedtime.  It was an awesome day of sluggishness.

Yesterday, we decided we were done being lazy and we packed up the Jeep for a four wheeling adventure to Box Canyon, which is about and hour and a half south-east of our house, near a tiny town called Florence.  It was an amazingly beautiful 80 degree day and the trail was awesome.  There were only a few times I thought my brain was going to bounce out of my head and I stepped on a cactus branch in my flip-flops while trying to pee in the wilderness, so that was…interesting, but we really had a great time.  I love having our Jeep and we high fived yesterday on never selling it.  Go us.  We ended the day with delicious Cafe Rio (oh how I wish there were one closer to our house) and drove home.  It was such a fun day, I’m glad we decided to kick the laziness and go do something.

Today I’m back to work after two weeks of blah - I mean I worked during those two weeks but it was all from the couch..  It was rough getting started but nice to be back in a routine that didn’t involve hours of Netflix, pajamas and my couch blanket - aka Snuggie.  I’m sure poor Matt thought he’d never see me with make-up or normal clothes on again.  I guess I had to wash my sweat pants at SOME point.

I’ve joined a lot of people in skipping New Year’s resolutions this year.  I really just want to focus on loving my life and being happy, so I’m not making any specific goals, I just really want to keep my chin up and have a positive attitude all year long, no matter what happens.  It might be the hardest thing I’ve ever set out to do, honestly, but I’m determined to make it happen.