I was almost tricked into supporting Right to Lifers

While I was running my errands this morning I drove past a car wash for life and I thought ooh! I'll get my car wash and support life. To me "life" means either lifelong aids alliance or cancer. It wasn't until I saw the t-shirt that said "pro-life" that I stopped myself. Phew. That was a close one!

Maternity Leave is almost over

On Saturday I will have been here 12 weeks. Because I work in benefits 12 weeks to me means FMLA time. :) (I know it is illogical, but go with it)

So I have been here 12 weeks and maybe it is due to the comfort of my AC and my absolutely fabulous sofa I'm sitting on, but I feel like I have no opinion on living here yet. I don't hate it, which in itself is surprising given how I hate to be hot. There are definitely things I do like about living here (palatial apartment notwithstanding). Of course part of that is just amenities I have now that I didn't have in Seattle. It is nice owning a car again. I hadn't realized how much I missed driving. Maybe not driving so much but the freedom owning a car brings.

My job... I don't know yet how I feel about it. There are aspects I like. There are aspects I want to like. I was lamenting to PeevedMichelle a couple days ago that I wonder where I would be careerwise if I had never moved to Seattle. I usually get this way when I am stressed about money. Where I am now is more than I was at the u. It took me over 5 years to get back to my LA salary in Seattle. Michelle very astutely pointed out multiple things... 1 - for almost everyone working, the grass is greener somewhere else. 2 - the extended unemployment and then working at the casino really did a number on my confidence. 3 - the university ultimately didn't help because it was so much better than the casino (but in the grand scheme of things not great either on several levels) that I just stuck around out of gratefulness. I also stuck around because certain benefits were just hard to give up. Having as much time off as I had was awesome. Ultimately this all leads me to the fact that this is not my end of the line job. I'm not sure how long I'll stay at my current place. I like it well enough, but they don't pay for most benefits, I'm iffy on how they treat employees as a whole, and there's no growth possible. Also I'll need more money if I'm adopting in a couple years.

Funny

This cartoon from Stone Soup totally cracked me up this morning.

Orientation

I've decided Fort Worth's volunteering organization(s) will be ones that benefit women. I've emailed Dress for Success in hopes of volunteering with them but haven't heard back from them. The other is a secret organization who helps women get out of DV situations. I decided to work with that one because they have a kids' program and I think it might be helpful for me to work with kids who have come from less than ideal situations since I'm hoping to adopt from foster care (and those kids have definitely come from less than ideal situations). I attended orientation this morning. I'll have to do an interview and then some more training and I can start working with their kids' program. I think I could end up working just 2 hrs per week or 3. I'm excited to start this. I think it will be a good project for me.

Summer Goals

Something about this new apartment is inspiring me to be better about organization and whatnot. So I have a goal for the summer... get organized. I got rid of a lot of clothes before the move, although I'm pretty sure there are more to do.

• I have 4 boxes of chaotic photos. Toss the ones that are bad. Label them all. And put some to be on display in my photo boxes.
• Go through the boxes in storage. There are boxes in my storage that moved with me from Alaska. I don't think they've been gone through since then. I'm sure there's a lot to get rid of, but I do want to keep my kid books.

Hmm. That doesn't seem like a lot, but given that my storage unit is pretty full it will be. :)

Why Disneyland is better than Six Flags

So I'm now a Six Flags PlayPass holder. Basically I can go to any one of many Six Flags parks in the US this year if I wanted to. I get a discount for the passes from work and I knew my sister would come back and theoretically Lyday is going to come and go and given that an individual ticket is I tihnk 50ish bucks and the Play Pass is 50 bucks it worked out well.

So my sister came down and we went this weekend where I realized that Six Flags will not replace a Disney park but it might be a nice distraction sometimes. We hit all the coasters and high tension rides. I got sunsick twice. The first time we managed to cool me off by going on Roaring Rapids and getting soaked. The 2nd we were in the car on the way home. We had the AC blasting and it just didn't help. We stopped in to get dinner and I couldn't eat. I got home, turned up the AC and turned on two fans and lay down in the bedroom. I could tell the moment the heat broke because all of a sudden I was FREEZING and had to cuddle up under the blankets. Had my appetite back and FINALLY could eat. (I drank water. I drank juice. I drank vitamin water. It was just too hot for me. And there are not a lot of cooling off options.)

Anyway as I thinking about it on Sunday I realized my issue with Six Flags. There are no middle of the road rides. All the rides (as near as I can tell) are either extreme rides - roller coasters and whatnot - or baby rides. There's no middle ground. Or at least what I consider middle ground. Admittedly Disney doesn't actually have a lot of thrill rides (and definitely not by Six Flags fan standards). But it is nice to get to ride Pirates of the Caribbean or Small World as a little lull. As it was we had to take a break after every 3 or 4 rides for me because too many in a row would make me ill. Maybe I just need to accept that I am not Six Flags' target audience. :P

Ahh Texas

So while I was walking around the grocery store like a normal person does when I came along the "international" aisle. The heading on the aisle: Mexcian & Chinese. Cracked me up a lot.

My sister is here in town. It is so exciting. I like it when she visits. We're going to Six Flags today. Tomorrow we're going to Wicked. It'll be a good time (albiet expensive). :)