Oh Blogspot, I hardly knew ye

I've moved to wordpress. Check out the new MetaMegan!

Update your links, subscribe to the new site!

See you soon for a house warming party at my new location.

Extreme Make Over - Blog Edition

I have a high school reunion that is just around the corner, and I had a 6 month plan to become fabulous before the big night. This plan mostly involved joining a gym and dragging myself there 3 times a week for the past 6 months. And I got my hair cut.

Zzzz. Oh, sorry, I was so bored I fell asleep. See also: tired from the gym.

But I decided to take a break from my constant self improvement plans to work on something else! A blog improvement plan. I thought I would start off first by blogging a lot, but then I thought, that's way too logical. First, I am going redo the whole blog, and THEN I will start blogging all the time. I'm in a hurry though because July is commenting month, and I need to have everything in place for all my awesome commentors. (Hi Laura(s)!)

First point of order:
Should I...
a.) Keep my current wonder woman graphic that I stole from the internet and cropped down to a smaller size. (Pro: Cute. Con:Stolen.)
b.) Use my facebook profile pic - (Pro: Cute, sort of anonymous, free advertizing for Jill since she took the picture. Con: Jack is in it. Would I crop him out, or photoshop Luke in?)
c.) Get someone to create a metamegan/wonderwoman one of a kind graphic. (Pro: Cute! Con: Who would do it?)
d.) Use a picture of myself as wonder woman? (Pro:Cute! Con: Horrifying if I become famous and everyone in the world sees it.)
e.) Other

Please leave your suggestion in the comments. Ha! Comment month is starting early!!!

Advice

I was really impressing myself on Sunday during my Target shopping trip with the advice I was giving myself, and since then.

1.) If all the cute dresses at target make you look like a giant whale wrapped in a tablecloth, consider purchasing cute workout gear instead.
2.) Don't try on dresses at Target, you have a job, shop somewhere fancier. You don't have time to go anywhere fancier, but that is a different story.
3.) If you buy darling new short workout shorts, just know that the day you wear them will be the day you are holding an exercise ball between your legs and waving your legs over your head. With a partner.

And now for some dubious advice from Jack:
1.) You don't need to wash your hands before you eat if you are eating outside.
2.) You should always wash your hands after you pick your nose.

This is all leading up to a money making idea that I had where I give awesome advice, but I am secretly a shill. I say, "You sound stressed. I find that a great way to relax is to build a photo book on shutterfly." Then I link to shutterfly. Ka-ching! Ad revenue.

I partially got this idea while brainstorming with my friend Laura (or one of my friends named Laura, as another friend named Laura pointed out). We thought maybe we could become nutritionists, or more realistically, quacks, and open a business where we tell people what to eat. She suggests "steamers" (Ka-ching!) I think steamers just increase the chance of running into work-weirdos in line at the microwave. I suggest biking to Whole foods for a salad. (Ka-ching! Ka-Ching!) I think conflicting advice will bring in the most ad revenue. And be the most pleasing for the readers. Who doesn't love conflicting advice on what to eat?

I can get lots of tips from this email that P&G sent me about how to improve my husband's health. Chock full of tips for people whose husbands are babies who can't take care of themselves, AND the useful things you can buy to make them healthier.

Don't worry, none of this will go into effect unless I quit or get fired from the job that pays me well enough to shop somewhere other than Target.

Second Grade, Then and Now

Luke on the first and last day of second grade.
You may also be interested in first grade, and kindergarden is here and here.

The Barbie Chronicles

If you are not friends with me on facebook, then you do not know about my alter ego, Computer Engineer Barbie. She has lots of adventures. Like, starting longingly out the window on a sunny Saturday while she tries to finish up a 60 hour work bender. Computer Engineer Barbie, or CEB, hasn't been this tired since she had a 2 day old baby.

It's Almost Alice Cooper Time

The countdown to the end of school is in full swing and we are all singing our favorite song: School's Out. Last year Luke was a precious first grader, who loved his teacher, so he was very unhappy about blowing the school to pieces, and teacher's dirty looks. Unfortunately, it's such a catchy tune, that it's really hard not to sing the refrain all morning before the last day of school. We tried to modify it a bit, but I can't remember what we came up with and I am too lazy/multi-taskery to look and see if I blogged about this last year.

But now that Luke is a too cool for school second grader, going on third grader in 5 days, he started the whole thing with a little Alice Cooper sing along before bed. Or maybe I started it. Regardless, I was very interested to hear what he had to say after, "I'll modify this song so it's more appropriate for me."

School's out for summer.
School's out for evah!
School's been blown to pieces.
No more pencils
Lots more books

Sigh. I just love my little bookworm.

On that note, did I mention that I updated the list of books read? (See above re: too lazy to look at yesterday's post.) Hopefully Luke and I will spend the whole summer reading, if I survive this weekend.

Where in the World is MetaMegan?

I am trying to wrest my life back from the cold dead hands of my job. Sometimes I have to work for hours and hours and have no time to blog. Sometimes I stay far away from my laptop to avoid working, and I can't blog then either. Sometimes I am working and watching TV, and my fave tv character, Leslie Knope, says the following:

"We need to remember what's important in life: friends, waffles, and work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn't matter. But work is third."

It's all clear to me now.

Opposite Day

I recently, and accidentally, told my boss he was the worst in an IM. In the third person. Almost as if I meant to say it to someone else. I ended up apologizing, but before that I worked on a couple excuses for my terrible faux pas. The best thing I could come up with was, "It's opposite day."

So I must have had opposites on the brain when we were camping in Moab because Jack and I got into a big discussion about opposite while we hung out waiting for the rest of our crew to be finished mountain biking. He wanted me to do something, maybe his shoe? Momma, do it! And I said something like, "well first I have to undo it. Then I can do it." He wanted to know what undo meant and I said it was the opposite of do. What does opposite mean? And so on.

So I just started giving him examples, and it went pretty well.
Me: What do you think the opposite of Up is?
Jack: Down
Me: Left?
Jack: Right.
Me: Day?
Jack:Night.
Me: White?
Jack: Soft. (He didn't get all of them right.)

But the best was when I asked him what the opposite of GOOD was. I was pretty confident he would get it, and I sat back, waiting for him to say bad. But you know what he said, right? He said EVIL.

Late Fees

As I said yesterday, I am very excited that Luke has gotten so into reading. Coincidentally, or not, Jack is also really into reading. He likes to say that he can read chapter books, even though he is only five. Which is very interesting for a 3 year old who can't read. I've been humoring him, and I have to admit I was mildly shocked/disturbed when he pointed to a big advertisement at the gas station and correctly said, "That says Pringles."

So now Luke and I have our "people who love to read" bond, and Jack and I have our "people who love to go to the library" bond. Fortunately for me, he no longer likes to go there just to poop. Luke was never too excited about the library, and every time we went he just picked out two Curious George books and then wanted to leave. To this day, I cringe when I see that shelf full of yellow. But Jack always wants to go, and there is often a heated discussion about whether we should go to the one by our house or the Main Branch. I am sure you can see where this is going. We have been checking out a million books, and I have been working 20 hour days, completely missing Easter, and not having any time for reading. So we have some late fees. As part of my plan to get my life back, Jack and I went to the library last night. I returned all the books except one, and I am embarrassed to even type this: Lose your Mummy Tummy. Women of Boulder are currently being deprived of this method (The Tuppler Method) for shrinking their waistlines because I have the book that they have been waiting for for months. I thought I would give it one last shot, and last night as I picked it up I thought, if I don't have time to read this book, I bet I don't have time to do the 1000 reps of the simple exercises that you can do anywhere anytime. The premise of the book is that pregnancy, and doing regular situps improperly can cause a separation of the stomach muscles called diastasis. Apparently that happens to 98% of moms, and unless you close that gap, your waist won't get any smaller no matter how many sit ups you do. There is actually a class you can take in Boulder, and when I was looking around at the beginning of the year for some different form of exercise, I thought about taking the class. Specifically, I tried to get a friend to take the class and then tell me how to do the exercises. My main reason for not signing up was the emphasis on "no matter how many sit ups you do" angle. It might matter if that number is 0, right? Also the classes seemed to be during times when I am busy, such as during a work day.

Short story long, I skipped over a very disturbing drawing of a grocery bag with groceries falling out the bottom that seemed to have something to do with what will happen to you if you don't do kegels, and I just read the part about how to diagnose how bad your diastasis is. And guess what? I am one of the lucky 2% of moms who do not have this problem. Maybe it's because I am genetically blessed, or maybe it's because I am just now trying to lose my mummy tummy (shudder) 3.5 years after having my last baby. Regardless, I can happily categorize myself with the women who are just in need of some exercise, and a significant reduction in ECI. (Easter Candy Intake.) The book goes back today.

Happy Mother's Day to Me!

It's All Greek To Me

Recently, Luke read a book that sparked an obsession with reading. It is called Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief. I have very vivid memories about the first book I read that turned the switch for me from someone who knew how to read into someone who loved to read. I was in fourth grade when I read A Wrinkle in Time, and I can remember where I set it down on the book shelf in the living room when I needed to stop reading and eat dinner. And I remember being in the backyard thinking about the characters, and imagining the book in my head. So it has been very fun for me to watch Luke have a similar experience with his first book obsession. When I read the Amazon reviews of the first book, it seemed targeted at older kids, so I read it too, because I am a good parent. I liked it! There is a lot of adventure, and Greek Mythology, and it's exciting, and funny. I love that Luke is learning so much about Greek Mythology. I used to have a book called, It's Greek to Me, because I always thought I would be a better person if I knew about Greek Mythology. But I don't recall reading it, just sort of occasionally noticing it on my shelf. I told Luke about it and he was quite annoyed that I don't still have the book. Although now that I am reading the description, I think I probably got it to study up on my greek roots as SAT prep. (Lame!) But I know more about Greek Mythology now, from reading just one Percy Jackson book, and discussing the rest with Luke every day, than I ever did. And that is very cool.

The funny thing is that I kept saying Luke was too young for Harry Potter. But one of the reviews I read on Amazon described Percy Jackson as something like a less earnest Harry Potter. I found that to be funny. I let the whole Harry Potter phenomenon pass me by, so I think it will be fun to read the books with Luke when he finishes this series. He had the last book checked out from the school library, and he was forced to return it because I guess the library starts to close down a month before school ends. He was devastated and convinced that when he gets another copy (friends have promised to loan it) it will take his entire independent reading time to find the page he was on. We might have to head to the regular library (or Main Branch as Jack says) to get the last book and get a head start on figuring out where he left off.