Happy Thanksgiving!

And here follows the obligatory gratitude post. ;)

But seriously, I have a lot to be thankful for. If you're friends with me on Facebook, you'll notice that I don't do the daily gratitude thing in November because, well, why try to do something I know I'll forget to do two days in?

So here follows some things that I am grateful for this year.

1. My family. Daniel is the most amazing husband and father ever. My boys are gems (most of the time). I'm so lucky that I live near my sisters and that my parents are able to come visit us, as well as being not too terribly far from Daniel's family. Oh, and Happy, I love my dog. :)
2. My job. I'm so grateful that I get to be a stay at home mom. As hard as it can be sometimes, I love being home with William and Jacob. Also, I love being able to spend a whole day in my PJ's. ;)
3. Writing. I love to write and create new worlds and characters to populate those worlds. I love coming up with stories. Again, it's not always easy, but it's worth it.
4. All the material things I take for granted. I live in a nice place. We have a good car. I'm able to buy food, clothes and other, less essential things. I love the internet and the TV. And books, so many books!
5. My religion. I'm grateful to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-Day Saints. It gives me peace and direction in my life, as well as connecting me to good people and new friends.

Well, I think that about covers it. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving (if you celebrate it) and try not to over eat.

Oh, a programming note: Starting next week I'm going to start a series of writing tips over at Kricket Writes. I've been thinking about doing this for a while and I finally figured out a plan. So look forward to that. :)

And Happy Thursday! Thanks for reading!

Kranky Kricket: Love/Hate Government

Unlike last week, I don't really have a laundry list of things that bothered me this week. I mean, yeah, there are some government things I could talk about, but my opinions aren't that much different from everyone else.

A lot of what's going on in Washington is interesting and everyone is all shocked or surprised by things, whereas I don't think they should be. What is going on now, this is not the first time our government has covered up an international incident. This isn't the first time different groups have been targeted and harassed by the government. And this is not the first time that the government has spent a lot of time and resources monitoring their own people for various reasons.

What makes things different now is that we live in an era of information. It's easier to find information and it's easier to spread it. Thanks Internet. Sometimes all we find and spread are lies, but in there is a nugget of truth. And thankfully, we the people, no longer have to simply take what we are spoon fed by the major media.

But even through all of this, I still love this country and I'm still grateful for this government. It's not perfect by any means, because it is run by people. And humans are possibly the most flawed creatures on this planet. But I'd rather live here than any where else.

Now remember friends, take deep breathes and let go of all that negativity and have a great weekend!

Kranky Kricket: The First Scream

Welcome to the first edition of Kranky Kricket, where I whine a little and y'all get to be my sounding board. :)

Okay then, everyone ready? Deep breath in, and SCREAM!

Being sick really sucks. So does figuring out that your old favorite way to sleep is bad for your neck and is why you wake up stiff every morning. Of course this is a new development. I strained my neck somehow a week or two ago and now I wake up hardly being able to move it. It gets better after being awake for a while and moving it around, but it's back the next day.

I know I should go to the chiropractor but as it is with insurance right now, it'd cost $40 a visit. And if you've ever been to a chiropractor you know it's nearly impossible to go just once a month. They always start with at least weekly visits, if not more. I really like my chiropractor, I'm just poor at the moment since we just had to pay for new glasses for William out of pocket.

And that's a whole other issue. I was taking him to one eye doctor that prescribed bi-focals for Will. I was skeptical at first but we still tried them for a month. Will spent the whole time wearing them on the tip of his nose so he could look over them. After determining that the eye doctor was on crack I found a new one. New eye doctor is much more competent.

Alas, we have already bought one pair of glasses this year, so insurance is not going to cover a second pair for him. $387 for a pair of kids glasses. I can't even imagine how much money my parents spent on glasses for me.

In other things that made me frustrated, not having internet. I'll admit it, I'm a slave to my computer and all my devices that connect me to the internet, so when that goes away, I feel a little lost. And I don't consider my self that addicted, honest.

But then the other thing is when you call the internet provider company about it, all you get is robot answering machines and then it has the audacity to tell you what websites you can go to to find out about local outages. Well now, if I could get ON THE INTERNET I wouldn't be calling you now would I?

So there's my gripes for the week. Tell me what's been bugging you this week in the comments! It's good to get these things out so we can all enjoy the weekend a little more.

Thanks for reading and have a Happy Friday!

The Results

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to try to stay off the internet for a week. Well I didn't completely cut my self off, but I did keep my self to only getting on once or twice a day. Overall, my experiment worked pretty well. It wasn't perfect. I still got online more than planned, but it wasn't half as much as I usually do.

And I did get more accomplished in my daily life. More cleaning got done, more errands ran. But I still wasn't as productive as I'd have liked to be. I truly don't think I'm being a  perfectionists about this. I just feel there is always room for improvement.

Now the new hurtle for me to climb is to stop playing stupid games on my tablet. A couple weeks ago I found this great tower defense game for free and it is awesome. I can't stop playing it. I even got Daniel addicted to it. Sad, really.

So now I've got to get my self to stop playing that game every time my butt is in a chair. It takes up a lot of time. *raises fist to the sky* Damn you awesome game creators!!

This whole "trying to be a productive adult" thing sucks sometimes. And trying to overcome 20 years of laziness seems impossible. Why does it have to be so hard?

For my dad, even though he never reads my blog unless I tell him too. ;)

A Life Experiment

I came to a realization last night. I spend way to much time on my computer doing nothing and most of that time is spent checking Facebook, Twitter and Absolute Write over and over again. And really not much happens during the day.

I've known for a while that I have a weakness for being lazy. I'm easily distracted with books, games and anything that I can use as an excuse to not get needed things done. I've been like this since I was a teenager, and this my bad grades in high school and college. I can always find something else I'd rather be doing than cleaning, or writing, or even playing with my boys.

The end result of this is that I've been miserable and feeling guilty all the time. I have these high expectations for my self. I know what I should be doing, I know that I am capable of doing it, I just chose not too because I'd "rather do something fun". It's a pretty immature attitude.

I'm 26 and the mother of two boys, it's time I grow the F* up. I know this will be hard at first. It will take a lot of self discipline and self control to keep away from all the things I have that distract me. But I also know that I can do it and that I'll be a better person for it.

So what happens now? Well, I won't be online as much as I used to be. I'll check in maybe once or twice a day, but that's it. I want to have it that the only thing I use my computer for is to write or research things. Plus, I'll have to keep from playing games on my Kindle. I already don't watch much TV, Will has a hold of that most of the day. And I won't stop reading, I need something to make me happy.

So we'll see how keeping off the internet for a week goes. If I can do it without going crazy and see how much I can get accomplished when I'm not sitting on my butt all day.

Thanks for reading! Have a happy Thursday and November. I'll check back in a week and tell y'all how it went.