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Humpday Confessions: I might or might not be a terrible parent

July 2, 2014 by Jana 33 Comments

 

Vodka and Soda

It’s time for another round of Humpday Confessions with Kathy at Vodka and Soda. This time, I’m admitting all the crappy things I do as a parent. I’ve had this stuff brewing for awhile and it’s about time I let it all out. Or, take it as a way to feel better about yourself if you are a parent. And, if you’re not, you can take notes on what to do, or what not to do.

It’s not that I’m a bad mother. It’s just that, well, maybe sometimes I do, or don’t do, anything I want. Because I can. It’s a beautiful privilege.

        • Like how when my daughter was about 2 and learning all the animal sounds, I convinced her that every time you see that animal, you have to say hello by making its noise to it. So, if we saw a cow, she’d say “moo”. She’s 7 and still does it and it amuses me. Every. Single. Time.
        • I totally schedule play dates based on whose parents I can tolerate. The more I like the other kid’s parent, the more play dates we have.

 

            • I am not a sit on the floor and play Barbies kind of mom. I’ll play board games, do crafts, bake, read stories. Anything but Barbie. 
            • If I’m really tired and want to nap, I’ll say “let’s watch a movie and you can pick”. Inevitably she’ll pick a terrible, boring movie and I get to nap and she thinks she won because she got extra TV time.
            • She talks constantly. I think every single thought that pops into her head comes out of her mouth. To give myself some quiet during the day (oh, right. I stay home with her), I tell her she has to do her 20 minutes of daily reading at the point in the day I can’t take it anymore.
            • Her sport of choice is cheerleading. I love my daughter. I do not love the cheerleading environment and secretly, and sometimes not so secretly, I mock it. I appreciate the athleticism that goes into competitive cheerleading but cheer moms make dance moms look normal and Bring It On? That shit is real, y’all. And then there’s the whole issue of cheer politics. Insanity.

 

          • Cheerleading irks me so much sometimes that I try to get her to quit. #noshame
          • When it comes to her TV shows, I tell her she’s not allowed to watch shows I don’t like. Like Spongebob. That porous, pineapple living motherfucker can kiss my ass.
          • When people tell me my child is cute or pretty, I never know how to respond. I mean, I respond with “thank you” because what I want to say is “I know” but that seems way too arrogant.
          • When she does or says something mean or snarky or rude, and it’s funny on top, it’s hard to reprimand her. I do but my laughing probably negates the whole thing. And occasionally, I don’t even try.

I could go on but then you’d probably start to think I really am a terrible mother. And maybe that’s okay. But, despite my quirks, she seems to be turning out just fine. At the very least, she’ll have plenty of fodder for her own blog or book. She’ll probably call it “Everything My Mom Did is Wrong but I’m Still Okay. Mostly.”

Filed Under: Family, Life Tagged With: confessions, linkups, parenting

July goals and June goals recap

June 30, 2014 by Jana 26 Comments

Remember when I posted my June goals? It seems like yesterday but really, it was a whole month ago. And in that 28 days, I did, well, pretty much nothing. Maybe not nothing but not really a whole lot either. Because this is kind of how I felt:

rs_500x281-140109091040-tumblr_mwvlg7zpX31sgbgvno1_500

Let’s assess.

  1. Lose weight. My fat ass has a whole lot of pounds to lose and I did lose a couple of them this month. Not exactly sure how much because you know all that bloat and nonsense you carry around when you’re getting your period? Yeah, it made my end of the month weigh in depressing and probably inaccurate. So, I guess I can say I accomplished this one but not sure how well I accomplished it.
  2. Work on the couch 2 5k. Not quite up to the whole 5k but almost. Finishing up week 7 and I have to keep repeating days as I refuse to allow myself to move on until I can do a whole run without stopping and 25 straight minutes is HARD, y’all. We’ll call this goal accomplished but with prejudice.
  3. Essential oils. I did a ton of research and narrowed down the areas I’m going to use them in (insect repellent, aromatherapy-type stuff, and cleaning products) but I didn’t buy any. I can’t figure out which ones are good, which ones are bad, and honestly, they’re kind of an expensive commitment and I don’t want to pick the wrong ones. We’ll also call this one accomplished but with prejudice.
  4. Crochet potholder. Fuck crocheting. I’m done. I gave up spending any time and energy on something I just cannot do. Maybe I’ll try to find a different project as far as crocheting goes but a potholder or blanket or anything like that can seriously suck it. Failed this one with pride.
  5. Sew pillowcase. No excuse on this one except lack of planning. I could have made time to do it but didn’t. I need to get better with my schedule. Failed this with shame.

Alright, now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to July. I don’t think I’ll be too ambitious because summer is in full swing and with my daughter home, it makes it a bit more difficult to work on time consuming projects. And rather than set myself up for failure, I’ll just back off the ambition. 

  1. Lose weight. Same as last month, and probably a staple until I get to my goal weight. So let’s plan on this one as a staple goal for awhile.
  2. Complete couch 2 5k and run the race. The husband and I signed up for a 5k on July 19 and my goal is just to survive it. Because clearly I hate myself and purposefully sign up for my first race. In July.
  3. Bring back Pinterest project Tuesday. You know all those pins I have? I should probably actually do some of them. Then I can share what I did and amuse you all with my failures. Also, it’s a good way to keep my daughter busy.
  4. Outline my novel. I have long had a dream of being a published author, with my book sold in bookstores and doing a book tour and all that jazz. That’s not going to happen if I don’t write a book. But I have an idea. I just need to fine tune it and get writing.
  5. Host a linkup. I have this idea for a linkup (well, two actually but I’ll save one for August) and I want to roll it out. The premise is “Notes to My Teenage Self” and the idea is to write a letter to yourself at any age in your teen years about any topic you want–body image, money, career, friendships, relationships, etc. But it gets better! Then I want to take all your posts and compile them into an eBook. It’ll be available for free and first and then I’ll set a price, with proceeds donated to a charity TBD.
     notes buttonThat’s all she wrote for my July goals. Completely doable and I’m hoping to be able to write “accomplished” next to all of these in August!

 

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: goals, Pinterest, writing

Friday favorites, volume 9

June 27, 2014 by Jana 17 Comments

Back for another round of Friday favorites. 

I’m trying to come up with a set list of topics for my Friday posts. I think I’ve narrowed it down to: song, frugal find, internet thing, book/TV thing, and funnies. I like consistency and doing it this way will make it easier for me to write and you all to read. I also feel like I can throw in a random bit of extra whenever it crops up. What do you guys think?

Let’s get to it and see how the topics all work together:

Favorite song

I like a good, sappy love song as much as the next person. But what I really like is when a band can take a sappy love song and put a rock edge to it. That’s what Adelita’s Way did with their song Alive. I heard this song for the first time a few weeks ago via my Shinedown Spotify radio station and like last week’s song, Amaryllis, it just hit me. To me, this is what a love song SHOULD sound like. 

Have a listen:


 Favorite frugal find

This week’s frugal find wasn’t so much a find as it was an accident. I had made an appointment to get my dogs groomed and yesterday afternoon, I got a call that there was a cancellation and our groomer could fit us in early. Hooray for that because my guys desperately needed a haircut. However, our groomer is 30 minutes from our house and  it didn’t make sense to keep driving back and forth so we wanted to stay near the groomer. Makes sense, right?

Well, our typical go-to free activities were all unavailable. The library is closed on Thursdays, it’s too humid for the park, and my friend with a pool was at the beach.Miraculously I remembered that we have another friend that lives nearby and, amazingly enough, she was home. My daughter got to spend the afternoon with her daughter (BFFs since they were infants in daycare), I got to hang with a friend, and we didn’t spend a dime. Hooray for me actually remembering something at a convenient time!

Favorite internet thing

When I don’t thoroughly hate the internet, I absolutely love it. Mostly because of gems like Shane, the Walmart deli guy. I don’t even care if it’s fake. Because someone is funny enough to do stuff like this (click on the picture for link to the whole post):

walmart-some-assembly-required

Favorite book/TV thing

I just started reading Emily Giffin’s new book, The One & Only and the best I can say about it so far is that it is exactly what I expect from an Emily Giffin book. I also discovered a book on my Kindle app, Real Happy Family, which I must have downloaded when it was offered for free and then forgot about. But I’m glad I rediscovered it; it’s turning out to be a great book so far! Definitely an easy read but a good story. Different. Which is nice.

As far as TV, I found out that two of my favorite shows are coming back in August on back to back days. The Killing, which now has all of its new episodes on Netflix, premiers August 1 and Hell on Wheels premiers August 2. For the record, both of those are absolutely binge worthy. And both are on Netflix. 

And, just in case you’re still not sure, here are two reasons to watch the shows:

Anson Mount, from Hell on Wheels. Only he and Charlie Hunnam make facial hair look good.
Anson Mount, from Hell on Wheels. Only he and Charlie Hunnam make facial hair look good.
Detective Holder from The Killing. One of my favorite characters on TV. Period. And not bad to look at.
Detective Holder from The Killing. One of my favorite characters on TV. Period. And not bad to look at

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Favorite funnies

How I feel about some people lately

Thankfully I found him. 

269759

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Story of my life 

I don’t know why this is a teenager post because I’m pretty sure they don’t really know what body fat is. I, however, do and this is completely true. I’m basically looking to become the Robin Hood of fat. As in, I’m rich with body fat and I’m happy to donate some to the poor.

body fat

 

 

 

 

 

 

And simply because a good fart joke is always funny

farts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Friday and have a great weekend! See you back here on Monday! And, linking up with Amanda, per usual.

Friday Favorites 

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Entertainment, linkups

Humpday Confessions: TV edition

June 25, 2014 by Jana 37 Comments

I’m so excited for my first Humpday Confession here on Jana Says. Yes, I know there are published posts but this is the first one I’ve written with my two blogs merged. It feels good. Not like “come home to a clean house with Matt Damon waiting to take me to dinner” good, but good.

That’s enough about that.

Let’s get to confessing.

Vodka and Soda

To start, I need to say that I enjoy how Ian Somerhalder is now the face of Humpday confessions. Ryan Gosling is just fine but Boone from LOST? Better. Also, I know he’s on some vampire show but he will forever be Boone. Like NPH will always be Doogie Howser.

While we’re on the subject of TV shows, does anyone else automatically think of gangs conducting illicit activities every time they see a group of bikers (motorcycles, not bicycles) ride by? I totally do and I live off a road where many, many bikers ride. What I imagine those guys–who are most likely harmless–doing is probably fitting for an episode of Sons of Anarchy (Call me, Kurt Sutter. Let’s talk scripts.)

And did anyone else watch Rising Star? I confess that I totally didn’t want to but got sucked in watching it, especially after this one kid from Long Island sang and he was incredible. I still won’t download the app and actually vote but this little message it gave my husband will keep me watching:

Apparently this edition is all about TV so let’s keep going.

I don’t watch much reality TV because mostly it sucks but when I do, I watch 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom (and I’m ecstatic it’s on for another season #noshame), and I confess I am completely mesmerized by the Duggars. As in, I want to stop watching 19 Kids and Counting because Jim Bob is the worst and it’s so painfully constructed and fake and but I can’t. They’re fascinating. I have to see what they do next.

I confess that I realize my taste in reality programing makes me essentially a 17 year old girl.

I confess I’m absolutely fine with that.

You know what else starts this week? Girl Meets World. Or, as I’m calling it, Cory and Topanga Had a Kid and Now There’s A New Show. I confess I’ve totally been following along for the last year, including watching all the trailers and getting little girl excited over the updates in my FB news feed.

I also confess that I stop my life many days to watch the reruns of Boy Meets World on MTV2. #noshame

And for my final confession, I will say that when a show I want to watch but am behind on doesn’t have the episodes on On Demand, I get stabby. Especially if it’s a show I want to keep binge watching but can’t because I’d have to miss essential beginning of the season episodes. Also, I’m starting to think that binge watching shows is my new hobby. And another also, I found this on BuzzFeed about 25 binge worthy shows you need to watch from the beginning.

To bring it back to the beginning, LOST is #5 on the list. Proving that Ian > Ryan. So kudos to you, Kathy. Excellent choice (even though I know someone made the button for you and I totally give her kudos as well but you made the decision to keep it so you get props).

Any TV confessions you’d like to share? It’s okay. This is a safe place. Confess away.

Linking up with Kathy from Vodka and Soda, as usual.

 

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: confessions, Entertainment, linkups

Friday favorites, volume 8

June 20, 2014 by Jana 20 Comments

This has been an odd week. I haven’t done much posting because I spent most of the week in New York at my parents’ house. And for some reason, nothing gets done when I’m at their house. I’m too busy visiting and spending time with the fam and this time, I even went to the movies (saw The Fault In Our Stars. All the cries) and took my daughter into NYC for the first time. The highlight was eating at Ellen’s Stardust Diner and if you even find yourself in Manhattan, GO THERE. Not only is food kick ass but also, the waitstaff sings. Like, really, actually, sings. It’s apparently a really famous place and a breeding ground for Broadway performers. 

Definitely my favorite part of the week. But I have other favorite stuff, too, and I’m linking up with Amanda to share them with you.

Favorite song

This week’s song is a two for one deal because it also features one of my favorite singers, Brent Smith. He’s the singer for Shinedown and I would listen to him sing the alphabet. Or even Losing My Religion, which is my least favorite song of all time. I genuinely love all of Shinedown’s music but Amaryllis is probably my favorite song of theirs. It’s a beautiful, beautiful song with some seriously powerful lyrics. I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to share it. 

And even though it’s live, Brent’s voice is so amazing it doesn’t matter. 

Favorite frugal find

So many this week. The $1 ticket on the LIRR for my daughter. Dyeing my roots myself for a $3 box of hair dye and having it look the same as if I’d gone to my hairdresser. But my absolute favorite is learning I can take a creative writing class–for free–at the college where my husband teaches part time. You can’t beat that.

Favorite internet thing

I thought it was the Brian Williams version of “Baby Got Back”. It’s not. It’s this post, 30 Signs Made By People Who Don’t Know How To Use Quotation Marks. It’s hilarious and filled my grammar nerd humor for the week. We need to stop punctuation abuse. It’s time. (Side note: we once drove behind a truck that said the contractor was “licensed” and “insured”. Yup. That inspires confidence). Here’s a sample from the post:

image111-620x
Favorite thing someone else did

Again, this is a twofer. First, I love Kelli’s new blog. She did a fantastic job! Second, I posted this on Instagram but it’s worth sharing again. Because when you go to lunch and one of the servers sings “Cool Rider” from Grease 2, you share that shit. I should mention that for some reason, the video is uploading sideways and because it’s a video and I’m moderately inept, I can’t fix it so just listen while you read the rest of the post. Also, it’s short because I’m running out of memory on my phone and I’m scared of the cloud and to delete things.

 

Favorite funnies

Or a spoonful of Nutella
20140619-220623-79583325.jpg

I totally throw things out when she’s not looking.
20140619-220735-79655142.jpg

I’m old and my brain is at maximum capacity.
20140619-220832-79712955.jpg

Math is the worst.
20140619-220934-79774435.jpg

This weekend I’ll be working on merging my two blogs. I’m crazy excited for you guys to see everything!

Enjoy your weekend!

 

Linking up with Amanda

Friday Favorites

 

Filed Under: Life, Money, Random thoughts Tagged With: Bloggers, linkups

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Jana

I'm Jana ...

A book reading, nail polish wearing, binge watching, music loving, dog owning, reluctant cheer mom.
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