Today’s question is: Why is it that when you finally decide to make a change, you hate it?

Background: I have painters here this week. When Celeste turned 9 last month I told her I’d re-do her room for her birthday. They came to do her room and a small project in my bathroom. A couple days into it, the boss called to find out how it was going. As we talked he told me that if I wanted any more work done while they are here to have them do it and he’ll give me a really good price because his next job just cancelled (and it’s Christmas time and no one wants painters in their home). Being the good client that I am I’ve found many projects to keep them busy.

One project is the front hall. I have wanted to paint it for a long time. I want it a little bit darker. I want it to be striped. So I picked a color one shade darker than it is now. I came home yesterday after being out for a couple of hours and they had half the front hall painted. It looks exactly the same. I decided to sleep on it and decide if it really looks darker this morning, it doesn’t.

So now, I’m picking a new, darker, color and getting them to get one coat up on the walls today. I hope it turns out good. Man, though, it stinks throwing money away. But better that than living with a hallway that I despise every single day huh?

Today’s question is: How could my baby be 6 years old?

Background: December 5, 2001 is the last time I ever had a baby. He is a pretty big boy now.

Here he is:

He loves to have fun and is a very good little guy. Here he is having fun:

Happy Birthday, little man!

Today’s question is: why would anyone clean their recyclables out before they throw them away?

Background: This is a rhetorical question. I know the answer. It’s because for some reason they are easier to recycle if they are clean.

I do this. I clean out all things that go in the recycle bin. PW thinks I’m crazy. First of all, he doesn’t believe that half of all things in the bin are actually recycled. I do not believe that, and even if it were true, my moral obligation to recycle is met by doing the act. I can not be responsible, morally, for what the companies do with the stuff I recycle after they pick it up. It’s their moral problem, not mine. Because PW doesn’t believe the stuff is actually recycled he doesn’t make many efforts to recycle. I usually have to dig stuff out of the garbage, clean it out and then throw it in the recycle bin. I have serious moral issues surrounding recycling.

Which reminds me of a story from years back. I was pregnant and I just decided I’d let PW be in charge of the garbage. I know this is typically the man job anyway, but because PW kept putting my recycle stuff in the garbage bins I took the job away from him and made it my own. So when I was pregnant I gave it back to him, I just couldn’t be in charge of everything.

One Thursday, garbage day, when I was pulling out of the garage, I noticed two significant things. First, there were two garbage cans out. Never in the history of me being in charge of the garbage have we needed two cans, except maybe after a party or Christmas. Second, there was only one recycle bin out, and I couldn’t actually see anything in it. Upon inspection, there were three lonely containers in the recycle bin, THREE. I was steaming mad. I hopped out of the car, dug through the garbage cans to find the recyclables bags and sorted them right there, on the spot, in the alley. I called PW and asked what was up. I told him it was insulting to even put the dang recycle bin out for the recycle guy if there were only going to be three things in it. He admitted to having done this during his entire tenure as garbage boy. I could have cried, remember I was pregnant.

I took the job back after that. And six years later, it’s still my job. I’m just uncomfortable not recycling. Anyone else?

Today’s question is: Why can’t people let things go?

Background: I went to my 20th high school reunion about 2 months back. One of the gals organizing it and I go way back, back to grade school. We had been friends for a very long time up until 9 years ago. She was in my wedding and we hung out a lot together in our early 20′s.

Then something happened. I don’t want to totally speculate because I only know my side of the story. But she was engaged and broke it off. Then she started a wonderful relationship with a great new guy that she had met in post graduate school. It was sometime after I got married and before she got married to the new guy that things changed. Everything started to seem like some sort of competition. She never talked to me anymore, she just told me what she was going to do. You know like, “well, in a couple of months we’re going to Hawaii“. Or “we bought a new so and so car” and on and on. Nothing real anymore, just what we’re doing and what we’re buying and how great are we.

So I had it. I couldn’t take it anymore. She hardly even talked to me on the phone it was emails and emails and I know that things get screwed up in email depending on mood. And let me tell you, I was moody. I was pregnant with my first child. God knows I was flooded with new and interesting moods.

Like I said, I had it. So one day about 6 weeks before I delivered, I received the last ‘one up me’ email I could take. I decided it was time to break up. That’s exactly what I did with a little coaching from my sister to make sure my filter was working. I sent her the email to end it all and it was to the point but specific about not contacting me again at this time, I needed some breathing room.

Fast forward 9 years to the 20 year reunion. Because I had run into this gal at a party 3 years ago and she gave me the major cold shoulder, a mutual friend had strongly urged me to apologize for the break up at the reunion. I figured it had been 9 years and I sort of thought we could get past the whole thing and move on from this point. I don’t mean become good friends or anything, I just mean be in the same room without her feeling totally and completely, painfully uncomfortable. At the end of the reunion night, she was finally alone with her husband and I made my move. As suggested by the mutual friend, I brought up the past and said I was sorry if I hurt her feelings and I just wanted to see if we could get past it.

She proceeded to bite my head off, loudly and publicly. She asked me if I even knew what I did. She was yelling at me. She said “you broke up with me”. I was like “yeah, I know and I’m seriously hoping we can get past it”. Let’s just say she can’t. She wanted details, that at this point I seriously can’t provide. Not because I don’t want to, but because I never remember anything in that much detail 9 years and 3 children in 3 years later.

So, being the optimistic, easy-ish going person that I am I’m trying to figure out what benefit there is in holding a major grudge years later? I know it happens. I may even be guilty of it myself sometimes. But when the offender offers up a ‘truce’ why not take it? Why make things so hard?

Today’s question is: Why would anyone ban Santa Claus from saying “HO, HO, HO”?

Background: Apparently some people have an issue with the word “ho”. Some people think little children will think Santa is referring to a prostitute. Are they joking?

OK, I get that the urban dictionary just might define the word “ho” as slang for prostitute.

A friend linked me to the following story yesterday:

SYDNEY (AFP) – Santas in Australia‘s largest city have been told not to use Father Christmas’s traditional “ho ho ho” greeting because it may be offensive to women, it was reported Thursday.

Sydney‘s Santa Clauses have instead been instructed to say “ha ha ha” instead, the Daily Telegraph reported.

One disgruntled Santa told the newspaper a recruitment firm warned him not to use “ho ho ho” because it could frighten children and was too close to “ho”, a US slang term for prostitute.

“Gimme a break,” said Julie Gale, who runs the campaign against sexualising children called Kids Free 2B Kids.

“We are talking about little kids who do not understand that “ho, ho, ho” has any other connotation and nor should they,” she told the Telegraph.

“Leave Santa alone.”

A local spokesman for the US-based Westaff recruitment firm said it was “misleading” to say the company had banned Santa’s traditional greeting and it was being left up to the discretion of the individual Santa himself.

Sort of makes you raise an eyebrow doesn’t it? Santa saying “ha, ha, ha”? No kid I know is going to fall for that one.