Hazards of Teleworking (working from home/alt location)

Hazards of Teleworking

 #1 – Choking

When you are in a completely silent home--which is usually filled with the noise of four children and a very loud husband--working away and suddenly a toy goes off, making some ungodly noise, causing you to jump out of your skin, and choke on the Dorito that you were just inhaling.

#2 – Falling

When your husband doesn’t properly repair the damaged screen at the top of the chimney, and he also leaves the flu open, and a squirrel comes tumbling down  INTO YOUR HOUSE, and you RUN LIKE PHOEBE and trip and fall into the laundry room where you barricade yourself away from the two pound rodent. 

I didn’t actually fall or choke, but I could have. I also could have had a heart attack or peed myself.

So technically you could add:

#3 - Breaking a bone

When you slip on your bodily fluid because something terrified you and caused you to lose control of your bladder while running like a maniac to escape said something's vicious 1/4 inch claws.

#4 - Heart attack

When your dad doesn't live a block away and can't come rescue you from said rodent, so you have to use a broom to whoosh it while hopping up and down and squealing, terrifying the rodent, so instead of it running out the door, which you forgot to open because dad wasn't there to tell you to open it, it scrambles up your leg, vaults to your torso, and plunges into your face, clawing your eyeballs out. Or at least you think that's what's going to happen, so you have a heart attack just imagining it.

OH… and the squirrel was so scared, he peed a little dribble on the floor, which was a yellowy-greenish-brown and thicker than your typical human urine. Guess who had to clean that up? :raises hand:

 

You’re welcome.

 

 

Let's play Find the Nerf Darts!

You know it happens to you. You buy your kids new, awesome, Nerf guns and about 5,000 replacement bullets/darts. Three weeks later you tell the kids to grab their Nerf guns and bullets and they come running with their guns and 11 bullets. WTH?! Where did all the darts go?!
We had an ice storm in Dallas this week, so we were trapped in the house for days. My husband decides to venture out to Walmart to buy new Nerf bullets so they could play. He comes back with about a hundred darts and tells our four-year-old, five-year-old, and nine-year-old that they each get six bullets to fill their guns but when they shoot them all, they have to find their darts before they can play again. "It's not free reign on the darts anymore. I'm tired of replacing these things, and the dog keeps finding them and chewing them to pieces."
I'm sitting on the couch, Christmas lights on the tree, warm and cozy under a blanket, reading a book (The Twelve by Justin Cronin) ... and war breaks out. Darts flying all around me, whizzing past my head... for all of about three minutes.
"Time to find the darts!" my husband yells. For the next 10 minutes I hear them looking for the darts: Could it be here? Where did you shoot it? Who were you aiming at? Did you look under the couch? Okay, do we have all the darts now?
ATTACK!!!
Five more minutes of special ops sneaking, whispering, hiding, rolling, running, jumping, bullets whooshing. Then, "I'm out!" and "Me too!"
And so starts the vicious cycle: five minutes of playing Nerf Gun Wars and an hour of playing Find the Nerf Darts.
Guess who gives in and passes out more bullets? Yep, the General.

When we die of old age and our kids have to come clean out our house, they will find their fortune in Nerf Gun Darts.

Once Upon A Time there was an Adoption Party... humans, not dogs.



Once Opon A Time my husband and I adopted a sibling group of three.
When I Googled "Adoption Party" the results were mainly for animal adoptions. Yay for doggies and kitties! Not so much yay for me. So... I just did my own thing... with a lot of help from my Cricut machine.



Forever was a very important part of our Adoption Story. Being that we had a sibling group and the oldest of the three had memories of the birth family, we needed her to know that family was forever from this point on. 



Since we adopted a sibling group, the party didn't fit in the "baby shower" theme. Our kids were ages 2-7 and we had a boy and two girls. Plus this party was for my husband, our biological daughter, and ME.
So... I wanted something age appropriate for everyone and not too girly.


 

Happily Ever After... Forever



Meet the Rainbow Family

http://instagram.com/melaniegabbard?ref=badge

I wonder if my five-year-old daughter will always be as funny as she currently is. Last week we were sitting in the church parking lot, waiting for the previous service to let out so we could go to the next service. Yes, we go to a mega-church and we love it. Shout out Matt Chandler!!!
Since we had to wait about fifteen minutes, and our three youngest children tend to get impatient while sitting in a vehicle, in a parking lot, in Texas, in August, and I tend to not want to listen to booger, fart, burp, snot remarks, we turned on the movie that was currently in the DVD player: Zoom with Tim Allen.
Tim says, "You are so white."
My five-year-old daughter, Caisen, asks, "What does he mean, Mommy?"
I reply, "He means they have no rhythm or they're dorks. Like we call Aaron, Big Whitey, 'cause he can't dance and he looks goofy."
I should probably tell you that my husband, myself, and our eldest and only biological daughter are white, while our three youngest children are adopted and black or mulatto.
Smart-daddy asks, "Who in our family do you think is white?"
Caisen replies, "Mommy! She's VERY white!"
Hahaha... yeah, everyone laugh and get a kick out of my fluorescent skin... I won't be wrinkly and full of sunspots when I'm 60. Then we reminisce of about three years ago when Jazlyn, our now nine-year-old, told me that I was the whitest of the white ones. Yep, that's me, people. The whitest of the white ones.
Daddy asks, "So, what am I?"
Caisen very matter-of-factly says, "You're dark red."
My husband has freckles that kind of all mush together and as he gets darker throughout the summer, I would have to agree with Caisen on his coloring--dark-red. She said she is the darkest with dark-brown skin, and our three-year-old boy is very light-brown. She's about right on all of the above.
So there you have it. My rainbow family.

Tired Writer

 

I've been spending every waking moment working on my first YA book--it's paranormal, my fav. So, I have this blog, but I honestly have been focusing so much on my book that I haven't done much else.

Until this...

This is exactly what I feel like some evenings after working a full day in an office, coming home to a husband and three little kids (one is grown and in college), cooking, doing homework, reading books, and then finally I get to work on my book.

Sometimes, I'm sitting in my home office chair writing for about 15 minutes before this happens:

 

 

That's it... my first blog. :)