Stinky face

I mean seriously guys.. how adorable is this pile of puppy smush??? Thus the reason I am not showered yet.. really don't want to have to put him down. Oliver - Professional Cuddler and Mommy Procrastinator.

Zelda Face

Grrr.. Photobucket didn't resize this. Slowly losing my mind with this stuff.
Decided to take the whole day off today instead of just half a day. My boss said it was totally up to me and I could decide whenever.. so I decided this morning when I woke up and Oli was curled up on my leg all warm and sleepy. Staying in is always nice.
Stephen gets kinda frustrated with Zelda sometimes.. this is his Zelda face.

Is it possible to be head over heels for a dog? If so, I think I am. I love my dog SO much it's almost unhealthy. I even love his dog breath. His dog smell and sleepy sighs. Most of all I love the weight of his little dog body in my lap, all warm and snuggly. There is nothing finer. Yes, all you parents out there will say that feeling will be magnified a zillion times when I have a baby of my own. Looking forward to that. But for now, I love my dogs stinky little face more than just about anything I can think of. Well other that my husbands stinky face of course.

I did some editing on the ol' blog today. Notice anything different? This whole photo issue really has me steamed up ya'll. It used to be so easy for me to make it work and now its just not working!!!! I am a photo poster.. so that is the reason this is so infinitely frustrating.. sad Sarah can't seem to get over it.

Nothing very exciting this morning other than Oli's sweet sleepy stink. MMMM.. late morning Cheerios. Better finish getting all ready for the airport. See ya'll next week.

Brooklyn Sunrise

This was taken out our kitchen window this weekend.. really early.. just after the sun came up. If you look really carefully on the left side just over the rooftops you can see the financial district in Manhattan. Where the twin towers would have been if they were still standing. Really glad we were not here for that. At night you can see it all better and its a little more mesmerizing in the dark. You can see the Chrysler building pretty well. I am still having photo issues Jeremy J. Help..? Can't rotate image. That is the problem. Its rotated properly on the camera but.. when I upload it rotated or not, if it was taken in portrait it uploads sideways. No two ways about it. Oh well.. one day I will figure it out.
I don't have a lot to say. Work has once again drained me. Sometimes I hate my job. I think I have never had a job I didn't hate. So that could just be because I don't like working. I do work with some pretty fun people here though so.. thats a bonus.
Yeah so.. I really have nothing to say.. my brain is coming up with a big blank.. so .. the most interesting thing in this post is the view from my kitchen window. Tomorrow is Friday and I am going to visit my friend Ellen in DC to see her new baby, Seth. Really looking forward to that. Gonna go make some late night guacamole and hang out with Stephen and Oli now. Sorry guys.. this was kind of a waste of a read.

Insomnia

Hello and welcome to up all night.. well not really since its not even midnight at the moment but I feel like I could be up all night without trying hard. This day has been a mental roller coaster, which is a very white bread way of saying totally stinking weird.
I still have not posted pix from my trip home .. oh .. two weeks ago now.. but frankly the whole photo posting debacle made me a little bitter and I am working out my anger issues with Photobucket.. where do they come up with these names anyway? Its almost embarrassing. Its like when you see a hipster on the train wearing skull and cross bones leggings.. one part of you (me) is like.. "cool?" and the other is like.."dude.. even I know that is crossing a line..not to mention it went out of style about a year ago.. I think." Why can't they just name photo websites something simple like.. Post Your Photos Here or.. Blogger Photo Loading Site since blogger obviously has something worked out with Flickr.. SO unfair.. moving on..
my day was odd.. I did it to myself as is usually the case when I have an odd day. I was being all productive at work.. getting one of my bosses squared away to go to her conference in Atlanta.. rushing hither and thither with exciting items like milk invoices and FMLA leave papers.. FedEx called.. it was a typical thrilling day. So as is typical.. I got seriously bored and started staring off into space, only coming too when I glimpsed someone coming up or down the hall. So, I took a short lunch break and decided to treat myself to some friend Googles. Now I do this more than I should, admittedly. It can become an addiction so I limit myself to 5 friend Googles at one sitting. Today the name I chose yielded results on the first try-score! He had a MySpace page. I don't dig MySpace because I really like Blogger and for other reasons I will keep to myself so I don't sound hypocritical. ANYWAY..this friend is someone I have known for a long time from HP and it occurred to me that they might know or still keep in touch with other old Central people or something.. I found one friend in their friends.. then another from that site and another and another and so on.. MySpace explosion. I found so many people that I had been hoping I would never see again .. it was overwhelming. I was instantly back in High School .. right after John got sent to boarding school and hearing those kids telling me they all knew/thought it was me and I was the nark that got him sent away from home, as if him accusing me of that was not bad enough. My "friends" were of course no friends at all but just people who knew who I was. After a few minutes of looking at their faces, I walked down the hall to get some water and felt completely deflated. All the confidence I had built over the years since those HS days.. was gone in an instant. Crazy right? Memories are powerful. Repressed memories are deadly. I tried to remember who I was at the moment and that all of that stuff was ancient history. I thought about it all the way back home on the train. I felt like a poser. Like, the life I am living now was not true and that the girl who had sat in Ms. Farlow's orchestra classroom was the real me - the inescapable me. I wrestle with those types of feelings a lot but not like this. I had no idea something like seeing a person's face on their web page would bring all of that crap back.
When I got home I tried to explain to Stephen how insane it was seeing those people and how I started to feel and .. he just looked at me with a question mark over his head. That made me feel like I had to deal with the old me alone and frankly I was ready for her to quiet back down and disappear again.
We watched LOST.. SO good tonight right??!
Then, because I just couldn't resist the urge, I went right back to the page that started all the madness this afternoon. But this time I found another familiar face that was a friendly one - a Vineyard Alum that I have not seen in years. Sam Fagg.. which lead to Callie.. then Bradford and Rich .. Rebeca Andrews...people I was so happy to see it sort of made me wish I had a MySpace myself -SORT OF. I also found a high school friend that I actually missed, someone whose relationship meant a lot to me back in the day and it was nice to see he was doing well.
What is my point.. I'm not sure. Lurking can be hazardous to your health? Everyone I know or have known is on MySpace? Sure seems that way. I dunno if I even have a point but I know I am glad that those feelings came up like that. It gave me the opportunity to deal with them, put them in their place, and get back to normalcy. Growth is good even if it means you have to air your dirty laundry on your Blog to get the full benefit of said growth.
I promise to try really hard to get over my photo hang ups so that I can post the picture of me holding baby Maddie..a very proud moment.. but one captured in "portrait" instead of "landscape" so its gonna be a few more days people! Nitee nite.

GRRRRR

I woke up this morning so excited to do some blogging over my Cheerios... instead I have spent the last hour trying to figure out how to get my photos to stop loading sideways!!!!! ...I tried sending them from Flickr but you can't send more than one at a time as far as I can tell.. then I tried sending them from Photobucket and that seems to work but at this point I am so tired of messing with it that I am quitting for now... roar. If anyone has any suggestions how how to do it more easily please .... speak up! I miss the old blogger where if you had it turned the right way on your camera LCD then it would load correctly to Blogger.. what am I doing wrong?!!!??!

and in other news...

...right so ..it's been a month again since you have heard from me.. bad blogger! Bad Blogger!
Please direct your attention to the image above. This is what my fridge looks like these days. Now how does one make it onto the fridge, you ask? Simple my dear! Just send me something in the mail.. or better yet... pop into my head for no reason and I will dig out and old photo of you and plaster you to my kitchen appliance with a varying assortment of magnets. There is even a hymn there from Redeemer that was particularly meaningful one Sunday. My fridge is actually a very precious collection of dear moments. Like the letter that Stephen's grandmother Angie wrote to us. One of the sweetest most meaningful letters I have received in recent history. I must have read it 5 times at least. She also included a check for us to take ourselves out sometime. Well we did just that! We took ourselves to a fab dinner in a fab Park Slope establishment (since I have presently come to DESPISE Manhattan) .. now for the downer. I haven't written her a thank you note. The thing that makes this so sad is that I have sat down about 19 times to do so but have failed each time to produce anything more than a greeting. I have no idea what my problem is but I sure hope she is reading because Angie, you sweet sweet Grandmother you.. you made our week and that letter and check meant so much to us. THANK YOU ANGIE!!!!!!
I got Stephen tickets to a taping of Conan O'Brien for Valentines Day .. the taping was on the 21st.. Jim Carey was the guest (YEAH SERIOUSLY).. so we get there and Stephen just has no shame folks. Which is a good thing most of the time. It was a really good thing this particular afternoon since we were sitting in the second row of the NBC studio where Conan tapes his show. He, Conan, came out to get the audience going before the show and there was Stephen right there screamin' his head off and acting nuts. Conan zeroed in on him in an instant. He made Stephen stand up and dance with him.. then made fun of the way he was dancing.. then he decided Stephen was worth a hug and enjoyed it so much he made Stephen hug some other random guy in the audience.. then sent him across the stage to hug Max.. who then gave Stephen his drum sticks and sent him back to his seat. For about 5 minutes it was all about Stephen and Conan. Since Conan is our favorite late night host.... words can not express how amazing it was to watch him get more out of my Valentines Day present than I could have ever planned.. and then to have Jim Carey as the guest?!?!?!? It was stinkin' awesome! So it was after all of that excitement that I chose to use Angie's gift to take him out to that fab place in the Slope. Thank you again Angie.. I couldn't have done it without ya!!

So besides hangin' with the big dogs in 30 Rock my world has been pretty calm ... or something. I bounce back and forth between my peaks and valleys, but continue to keep from coming to rest in a valley so I am thankful for that. This past weekend we spent most of our time with various groups of friends. It was completely accidental but it turned out to be very relaxing to bounce from group to group and chat it up with everybody. I have come to grips with my own reality I think and that is a hard thing to get a handle on. Well, I should say I am coming to grips with it. I have been tracking my health very closely the last few months and my patterns are just that - patterns. That means that I can learn from them and take comfort in expecting their arrival instead of being caught off guard.
I am still homesick....but I am coping with that. I have allowed myself to disappear into the depths of my own nostalgia enough times now to heal the loneliness that stings. I think nostalgia keeps you grounded really. It keeps me grounded for sure. Its too easy to lose myself up here, so a periodic dose of memories keeps me from forgetting what really matters to me.

I thought I was pregnant this month.. yes I said it.. there was a tiny glimmer of a possible tiny one. Over the course of 5 years of marriage that can happen you know? We have had many "scares". This one was different though. I wanted it to be positive. I was devastated when it turned out to be false alarm. More specifically I was in denial.. I took 5 tests in all.. kept thinking it was too early or something. I am so tuned into my body these days I was just SURE this was it. It wasn't. This is the first time that I have been truly sad about a negative test. You know what that means !?!??! Could it be that the Shinglers are ready to start family? I'm not telling! You will just have to wait and see. Perhaps the tides have turned. I am still terribly happy with Stephen and my puppy. Adding another member to our budding family could only make me happier.

We are headed home on Friday to North Cacalaka .. I CAN'T WAIT TO GET THERE!!!!! Loads to do before we leave.. taxes. .. wash the Oli... pack.. clean.. you know the drill. It feels good to be going home! I can't wait to see everybody. I can't wait to eat Mom's shrimp and grits! AND this trip could be extra special because the newest baby Bollman is pending arrival! Michelle is set to be induced (I think) on Friday if their new little girl has not made her appearance before then. Stephen and I are extra excited about that :) Well I have to go and scrub mildew off of my shower. .. yes mildew grows in Brooklyn too. Bad joke. I have "missed the hell out of you my darlings" ..my lurkers. Stay tuned. I hope to be more verbal in March.