I met myself yesterday

I have always known that there was another Nicole Ramage somewhere in Portland. Never in my wildest dreams would I ever think that I would meet her, until yesterday. I was in my literature class and we were asked to interview our table mate and share something interesting about them so that our instructor would be able to remember all 36 of us. It turns out that my table mate, of all the people in the world was also named Nicole Ramage, she was also 26, and had a sun that is 1.5 years old. I was blown away. We didn't look anything alike but apparently, we are doppelgangers nonetheless.
This whole week, as well as next week is over flowing with a million things I need to get done. Today it is work and grocery shopping. I really want some food in my house so that is going to be my number one mission for the day. I also really need to get some work done so that I can have money to do what I like and pay the bills. Surprisingly my page views have been phenomenal for not having worked in 3 days. I really need to get print some coloring pages for my boys to put in their Easter baskets. I helped my sister out this year with picking up Easter for my nephews. I would feel bad if they got nothing-- especially knowing the reason is because someone stole one of their cars and they paid a lot of money to have it repaired-- money that would have gone to their Easter baskets and paying rent. Luckily for them, they don't have to worry about late rent and things like that because their landlord is my sister's brother in law. Their apartment is a complete shit hole and he does nothing to care for the property or the place but they don't seem to mind.
I don't know if my sister is going to be able to bring up the boys to do Easter eggs this year, or where we would do them since I don't have a table of any kind and I'm debating on whether I want to do eggs with Hail this year if they don't come. We don't eat that many hard boiled eggs and he hates eggs and won't even touch them. While egg coloring is fun, it seems like a waste if they won't be eaten afterwards. That, and I think he might be a bit too young to really enjoy it. Who knows. I have a few more days to decide on that one. My biggest concern, worry for this week is going to do the damn dentist. I am going to be terrified and worry over it until it's done and over with. I am allergic to Novocaine so if I have to have any work done they will have to gas me or something. I'm not sure. I just know that I will need a lot of work done and I'm not sure how long it's going to take but I want to get it done. My teeth haven't been hurting so I don't imagine that I have any that are completely rotted, but I know I have a lot of cavities-- after all, I am a baker. I drink far too much caffeine and I don't floss a million times a day.
I finally cleaned out my filing cabinet yesterday too. Man, that was long over due. I had stuff in there from 2005 that I had just been packing around. I also had ex-husband's stuff in there that I no longer see fit to keep. I felt a huge pressure lift when I saw it go in the garbage-- all of it, including the old printer that apparently won't work now cuz I can't get ink for it. It's no matter, the new one that I got is also an HP so it streams with my laptop. It also is very fast and efficient, unlike the last one. Speaking of computers, I need to find a new fan for mine. It seems to be going out and it sounds like a tiny helicopter spinning around in there. I have no idea how to fix something like and whether or not it would be easy but it needs to be done. That is an annoying noise. It has been doing it far less than it was before, but I still don't like to listen to it while I work.

Life update

Lately, it seems that everything has been a little crazy surrounding my business ventures as well as work in general. I have changed my schedule around, work wise, so that I can spend my weekends doing something fun without being overwhelmed. This gives me time to hang out with my kiddo and perhaps do something fun, crochet, and work on other fun projects as well as spend time with my Raph. We have been doing good, although this spring weather has really put a damper on being able to go out and do anything. All the changes with work and now my blogger interface have gotten me all kinds of fuzzled. Yes, I made that up. Work is becoming more of a popularity contest than journalism. Apparently, it is the industry standard to earn barges such as "Read 5 articles," "wrote 5 articles," "logged on." Woopty Do! If you were doing your job, all those things apply anyway. Eventually, all these things are going to mean something, so I simply have to go with the flow whether I like it or not. My page views are doing phenomenal and I will have a great pay check this upcoming payday. I started using twitter this month to promote my work and now I'm being followed by Rachel Ray, Food Network, Martha Stewart, and Parenting Magazine. These are huge successes to me as they have millions of readers and my work is being shared with all those millions. I am nearly done with my first character hat. Hail will love it because it's Elmo, or Memo as he calls him. I posted the question on my FaceBook as to how much someone would be willing to pay for a hat such as this and I only got one response. I feel that I may have to do some research and find out how much others similar to it are selling for. I was thinking of selling the fuzzy ones (like this Elmo Hat) for $20 because the yarn is expensive and I can't guarantee that I will always be able to get it on sale like I did this time. So I had to estimate the cost at full price. With that being said it cost me $7.75 just to make the toddler size hat. Most all other hats are not going to be that expensive because they are not made with furry, expensive yarn. Obviously I want my price to reflect that I am not a factory and I made this from hand. I made a dentist appointment for myself and Hail. I am terrified. I haven't had dental insurance in over 10 years and I know I need work done. the extent of the work is what scares me. Ever since I was a kid, I have been scared of the dentist. When I was 12 and had to have my double canine teeth pulled, those fears were justified when I found out I was allergic to the Novocaine. NOT FUN. This will be Hail's first dentist visit and I hope that it goes well. I have a few concerns that I am hoping I will be able to be relieved of or have fixed at an early age so it doesn't become a problem. It seems, but I can't say for sure because I'm not a dentist, that Hail has a narrow upper jar like my brother and his father have. Both had to have their jaw widened and I know it was significantly more painful as adults. If possible, I would like to have it done sooner so that his teeth grow normally instead of needing to pull those and get braces too. All things I know I can't afford. School starts up again on Monday and I am excited yet not about my classes for this quarter. Classes start at 8 in the morning so Raph will have Hail until nearly 3PM Monday and Wednesday. I have almost three hours between two of my classes, but can't go home to hang out because by the time I got there, it would be time to come back to school which is simply senseless. I am taking an Intro to Fiction course, Writing 121 and a basic sociology course. I know I am going to have a lot of papers to write, so work may be limited, which is also going to severely limit my pay.I know that I will somehow be able to make it work, I am just not happy over the prospect of limiting my funds, as most people are not fans of. I'm still working on my book challenge, although the book I am reading now seems to be dragging on. It is part of a series and like most series in recent years, I read the first three books, then the fourth one is a prequel. Shouldn't that technically be the first book? I don't need back story now after I've already slogged through 3 books and figured it out just fine on my own. Most all my favorite characters are missing that I was hoping would be in those installment. Such is life I guess. I will have to punch through it and move on.

Getting Crafty

Yesterday I decided to make the executive decision that I am no longer going to work on weekends any more. While I love my job and the topics I write about, I feel that I spend far too much time working and not enough time doing anything else. My two channels that do exceptionally well are crafts and food. While my family eats a home-cooked meal at least twice a day, I feel as if I am not getting to do enough "testing" and playing around with my crafts and food as I would like. The thing that I really miss is getting to crochet and work on my clay jewelry.

I used to have a booming business on Etsy selling my handmade items, them the arthritis set in in my wrists. For a long while I had to stop production and stop crocheting because it was too much to handle after a couple of rows. Now, I feel that I am at a point that I can manage with some Excedrin before and my wrist braces, if needed. I really want to make more hats and scarves, seeing as how, in this crappy weather they may be needed all throughout the summer months.

Yesterday, I spent my day on a pattern hunt and found exactly what I was looking for-- I was so excited, I sat down, copied the patterns all down on paper (because I still don't have any ink) and went digging in my box of colors. Unfortunately, I found that I didn't have all the colors of yarn I needed to make a single project. That was a huge bummer. Raph and I talked about it yesterday, because he knows that this is something I really wanna do and I know could make me great money, and we have decided that when we get our Oregon State taxes back, I get to spend $100 on yarn. YAY HAPPY DANCE!!!! I plan on buying one of every color I can get my hands on. I have a wide array of projects I wanna do, so I was thinking the one pounder yarn skeins would be awesome, but it's too bad they don't make them in every color. :(

Have a case of the Sundays

Yes, you heard that right. A case of the Sundays. I think I need to quit working on weekends so that I have a time to regroup for the week. I am all caught up on my work and only have 4 articles to do this morning but I still feel rather lazy and would prefer to hang out with my little man and watch Doc McStuffins. We like to color and I also need to organize my week for spring break and what my plan of attack is going to be.

I have found that Pintrest, after all my complaining about it, has become my favorite time waster ever. I have also found it to be very useful as well. I have found several projects to do for my column which kind of makes it worth poking around. They have so many food and craft projects that I won't run out of ideas for a long while. I could literally spend hours and hours on there looking for new ideas.

On a second note, I have been trying to talk myself out of getting some plants for the back deck when I get money for school. I want something bright and colorful to cover up my view of the hoarder house. The bad thing about getting some plants is that I kill them. I have no growing prowess at all. I killed a tomato plant that I received for mother's day last year. I also killed all my herbs that I had growing last spring. Each year, my grandma gives me a fuchsia for my deck-- last spring, I killed that too. The only plant that I ever remember keeping alive is a bamboo shoot that I got for my 16th birthday. I kept it alive for 2 years until I went off to college and gave it to my brother to care for. It died then.

Bummin'

Today I completely have no motivation to do any work. While it it is officially the start of my spring break, a time that I really need to sit down and work AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, I chose to do some spring cleaning instead. I cleaned out my sons toy box and man, had I have known before I started buying him toys that garbage would be more exciting I would have saved my recycling. In his toy box was a huge stockpile of straws, empty containers, pieces of paper and strings.

I got all my things ready for school so that when I starts again, all I have to do is grab my backpack and go since everything is already inside. My laundry is folded now, my dishes are clean and I was thinking of vacuuming but I can't do that until Hail is asleep. He's terrified of the vacuum.

Last night, I made spaghetti for dinner knowing full well that Hail wasn't going to eat it. His pediatrician keeps telling me that I need to continue to give him things to try, but I have had about 20 failed attempts with sketti until last night. He didn't eat the meat but he did soak up as much sauce as he could and ate all the noodles. This is the face that I ended up with when he was close to done.

Motivate me

Lately I have had no motivation for anything. Yesterday I tried to sit down and do some work. I got one article done before I decided that I wanted to test some recipes then make dinner. Because I have been procrastinating at work, I now have 14 articles I need to do which will more than likely not all be getting done today because there is no possible way for me to humanly do that.

I really want that Dragon Naturally Speaking program that will allow me to talk through my article instead of having to write them down. That is part of what trips me up and slows me down. Not only do I not type as fast as my brain thinks of the stuff, but I would much rather be playing with Hail, something I don't get to do when I have to work. I get up early to work before him, but by the time I'm done checking emails and writing my blog post, he's up and I haven't done any work yet. If I wait until he goes to bed, then I have another 2 hours to work before I start getting tired and need to go to bed. Because of school, I miss nap time to work. Although, he has started telling me that he doesn't need a nap. Then, this happens:

It's cute but exhausting. I really need a job that will pay me all day to do nothing. I thought about going into child care so that I could play with my son all day but that would require me to hang out with other people's children all day and I have found since becoming a mom that I don't like a lot of other people's children. They aren't mine, they don't listen well and I can't really discipline them so I just have to deal with bad behavior. No thank you.

Getting up early is so hard to do

When I was younger, I had absolutely no qualms of getting up at 6 in the morning for school, 5 was even acceptable as long as I had gone to bed before 11. Now, I can't do it to save my life. I set the alarm, I wake up to turn it off but for some reason I have every excuse in the world as to why I can't get up then. This mornings excuse I told myself as I dragged myself out of bed is that it's cold in the living room and Raph was snoring all night so I couldn't possibly get up because I didn't sleep well. Not sleeping well is always the excuse I use. Admittedly, most nights I don't sleep well. I wake up to most every noise, it takes me forever to get to sleep and then when I do I have insomnia and I'm wide awake for hours in the middle of the night.

When I wake up, aside from getting up to use the bathroom, I don't get up and do productive things because I know if I were to get up I will fall back to sleep for a long time and I can't afford to do that since Hail will be up at 8 in the morning. For some reason my child likes to be up early in the morning and not stay up at night. I don't know where he got that from as I am not a morning person and it stays relatively dark here in his room until about 8:30 9 in the morning.

Hopefully, this new Silver Spur cowboy coffee I bought will do the trick. It is STRONG. Seriously, as much coffee as I am used to drinking, I haven't even finished my first cup and it feels like I've been kicked in the teeth by a horse. I think one cup will be fine for now. I do love coffee though. Such a delicious invention....

Duh Duh Duh Insomnia!

As you may have guessed by the title, I have been suffering from a horrible bout of insomnia again. I had this problem a lot while I was a teenager, often not falling asleep until the wee hours of the morning. Mere hours before having to get up and go to school. Now, falling asleep is not my problem. I can go to sleep as soon as you please, however, I can't stay asleep. I am wide awake by 2 in the morning and it takes hours to fall back to sleep if I'm not just up for the rest of the night. I am tired and cranky most of the day, and I feel lazy and don't want to do much. This is not very productive behavior for working and taking care of homework. Most of the time I don't even want to look at it. I just want to take a nap but I feel that napping will only encourage my insomnia to continue so I try not to give in.

While I can't say I've noticed a huge uptake on article viewership since starting with Pinterest, I have gained more followers. I am going to continue to post my articles as I feel it will eventually be helpful. Also I have seen an increase in Twitter followers. From what I know, there is nobody on my Twitter that I personally know. I don't even really know how to use the site other than posting my articles, which I also do on Facebook. Overall, work has been going well though so here's hoping for continued success.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

I have decided that today is my lazy Sunday. While I am still working at doing things, I am doing it at my own leisurely pace. I have done quite a bit of baking, this morning. I made banana pancakes for the family and then I baked some pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. I have my chicken enchilada mix prepared, but haven't done much more with it yet, but it's still early. I only have 4 articles to complete today, so this won't be too difficult.

Watching Hail eat his little nacho lunchable for the first time has been more than entertaining. He ate a fistful of salsa and loved it. I knew that kit was weird but I <3 him. Even though he did throw all of them on the floor.

I spent a lot of the morning reading and coloring with Hail. Well, I should say, I colored and he tried to eat the crayons. Then we built a pillow fort on the couch. He destroyed it in 10 seconds by accidentally stepping in the wrong place but I think he preferred it without the blanket over the top anyway.

My day seems limited. I don't really plan on doing anything else after get I get my work done. I may play around on Pinterest and figure some things out if I can. A fried had a great suggestion that I think I may try. It seems like it would bring in a lot of extra reads to my Examiner articles since so many people are on Pinterest now. I don't really get the appeal of a giant online clip board, but whatever tops your taco I guess.

Well, I'm on my way! I hope everyone enjoys their Sunday!

Getting a Little Worried

I don't know if it is because I haven't gotten much sleep lately, or because I have been trying to do too many things all at once. Whatever the reason, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Hail has been driving me crazy. I feel bad because he hasn't really done anything out of the usual. I just feel like I want to be left alone to watch True Blood on HBO and work. Thankfully, I am no longer behind in my work which makes me glad, I worked for nearly 12 hours yesterday to get caught up and now I'm on track again.

I am getting a little anxious about CBS pay. I have followed all their instructions, written the articles before the required time, and everything seems kosher. I sent in a message to support, inquiring about the pay and how to get more articles but I haven't heard anything back yet. I am hoping that when their payday comes on the 10th, I am not left empty handed for the work I've done so far. I haven't heard anything about my articles needing editing. In the postings, they all say that CBS isn't going to publish the articles until May or April when they are more applicable. I hope I don't have to wait that long to be paid too. I have searched forums for an answer and nothing.

*Sigh* Hopefully things will find a place soon. I suppose I will just have to wait until the 10th to see if a check comes or not. I hope that it does because I have a pretty significant start already. I don't want to wait until April or May to be paid. That seems more than sketchy to me.

Have You Ever Had One of Those Days?

I am having one of those days today where I feel like doing nothing; and that's about how much I've done. I did go to school... and fell asleep in class. I finished my homework after I finally figured out what I was supposed to be doing. Then, Hail and I watched Rio for the 546 time. He loves that movie so much. He loves to shake his booty and dance like nobody's watching. Just this morning he was dancing like nobody's business and smacked his head of the coffee table, giving himself a huge goose egg. He just kept dancing like it didn't matter.

I have been trying to work on a few articles but I keep getting distracted and can't focus on things. I keep thinking that my list of ideas to write about is getting shorter-- I write most all for revenue share, so my articles need to be within topic as well as evergreen or holiday related so that I can make money on them each year. I don't want to work on my other CBS article yet because the first one hasn't been reviewed yet and I would really like the feedback so that I know more about what they are looking for. I didn't do the orientation before they gave me articles and although I have told them this several times they kept handing me articles!

Maybe I'll just take the rest of the night off and work on gaining some ideas so that I can start fresh tomorrow. It's my Friday tonight.

Crazy Days

The last few days have seemingly been super busy even though nothing out of the ordinary has happened to make me feel that way. I have been going to school and attempting to keep up on work so that I can have some kind of cash flowing in, even though that seems to be more difficult than it sounds. While I have a full course load, I actually only spend approximately 5 hours a week doing homework and I am only in class for 2 hours a day, 4 days a week.

I think that my biggest challenge has been Hail. While he has been behaving, his schedule has been so off from because two days a week he goes to Rachael's while I'm in school and the rest of the week he stays home with Raph or I. It can be tough although he loves getting to go and play with the dogs and kitties. Hail has now started walking most all the time. I suspect, however, that most of his walking is because we were bribing him with candy to get up and do it. Now, I cannot get him to sit down and look at his books or play or anything. He just wants to walk. In addition, because he is so tall, I have to constantly chase him around and make sure that EVERYTHING is removed from the counters because he can reach. With his bare feet flat on the ground. So chasing him around gets a little overwhelming.

I hope that once I can develop a schedule that things will start to even out some. I still have yet to come up with a schedule that works for me since I spend most of my time chasing a little one. He does not really take naps any longer either and he does surprisingly well with no nap as long as he is kept busy. Here's for hoping!

Time Management

Time management is something that I have always struggled with. I never know when to stop working on a project and move onto the next. This quarter could also prove to be a huge challenge for me as I have a full course load with over 15 expected hours of homework and I want to work as well so that I can keep some sort of money flow in my home. Regardless of the fact that the household expenses have been taken care of through financial aid.

One of my classes is an online class, working to create my own virtual assistant business. this course will be hugely beneficial in my work life, hence the reason for taking it. Luckily, I was able to finish all my coursework for the week because it has all been light since it's the beginning of the quarter. I haven't worked in a few days, so I know my revenue share is low. Hopefully when I get home from school tonight, I will have some time to work on some articles I have been composing.

I guess, my overall question for everyone is this; how do I spread my time out to care for all my responsibilities- parenting, school, and work?