Mommin' It Up!

January 8, 2013

It doesn’t take much.

It doesn’t take much to amuse me. Clearly. I mean, I think this blog is freaking hilarious.

My standards aren’t terribly high.

Take this hand soap, for example.

The lovely woman who cleans our house left it for us right before Christmas, and a few days later I told Andy “This good-smelling hand soap makes me ridiculously happy.” He was all, “I know! Me too! We should get more!” So then a few days after Christmas we went to Bath and Body Works to invest in more small bottles of happiness.

It was tough to decide, though, how many to buy. I mean, we are talking about soap that smells good. It’s a major investment! Andy said, “We have four sinks. We should buy one for every sink!” And then I said, “But wait – they are six for $20…. maybe we should buy six.” Andy justified this extravagant purchase by saying that we’d definitely get around to using all six eventually – and then he hit his estrogen limit, grabbed Sam, and ran out of the store, leaving Kate and me to make the tough decisions on exactly which scents to buy.

Spending that $20 seemed like an agonizing decision, and I don’t know why. I’m sure we spent more than that at Wendy’s on the way to the mall that day. But even after I made the purchase, I was comparing the price to the 10 for $10 Softsoaps available at CVS, and it even crossed my mind that I should check Pinterest for ways to make my own smelly soap for a nickel.

That is dumb.

The soap makes me (and Andy and Kate. I’m not sure Sam cares. Or washes his hands.) happy every time I use it. It’s a simple, cheap (yes, cheap) way to infuse a little happiness into my day. That’s well worth $20.

What simple things make you happy? How do you (or can you start) to work them into your daily routine?

January 3, 2013January 3, 2013

Rise & Shine

I have resolved to be resolution-less in this new year, but there are definitely things in my life that I want to work on in the coming months. Most of them revolve around the fact that I want to feel better – and a big part of that is getting good sleep. Getting good sleep so that I can actually get up out of bed in the morning, which would lead to all kinds of fabulous things like not screaming at my kids to hurry the crap up, not wearing a ponytail to work, and arriving at work on time.

Waking up in the morning has always been a huge issue for me, and a few months ago I started researching things that might make it easier. One of the things I came up with was the Rise and Shine Natural Wake-Up Light from Verilux. I had worked with them before, so I reached out to see if I might review this product as well and they were kind enough to send me one to try out.

It functions as an alarm clock, but there’s much more to it than that. First of all, there’s a sleep cycle. I just discovered this a few nights ago and I really like it. You can set it for 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes, and the light starts out bright and progressively gets darker. I set mine for 60 minutes a few nights ago and read until I couldn’t see anymore, and by that time I was super relaxed and ready to go to sleep. (Now if I could only get my husband not to come in and turn on the television and disrupt my peace!). The wake up cycle works similarly – the light progressively brightens as your set wake up time nears. Also, you can set it so that it plays “spa sounds” as you wake as well.

The idea is that the light helps realign your body’s circadian rhythms so that you fall asleep naturally and wake up refreshed.

I really like this light. It is a much different experience than waking up to a blaring alarm clock – and when you think about it, jolting awake can’t be good for your body! That said, it’s taken some getting used to, but I’d say that’s to be expected when going from alarm clock shock therapy to an easy, gentle wakening. A word of warning, though – if you hit snooze three times, it gives up on you and doesn’t try again! I learned that one the hard way. I am trying to wean myself off the snooze button, though, and the Rise & Shine is the way to do that.

In my opinion, there’s not much that’s more important than a good night’s sleep. I looooove to sleep. I love drifting off to sleep as the Rise & Shine dims! I don’t so much love to get up, but I do love getting a paycheck so I must… and the Rise & Shine makes that process much more pleasant.

January 3, 2013

I suck at Scramble with Friends

Last week when Jenny and I quit blogging and had lots of time on our hands (or something like that), I developed a new obsession – Scramble with Friends. I’m sure I’m the last one to this party, but in case you haven’t seen it, it’s basically a Boggle-like game app. Make words, beat your friends, feel good about your prowess.

There’s only one problem – I suck at it.

No really, I do. Take a look.

photo (2) — Bobby found 99 words. I found 53. I lose. Again.

It makes me SO MAD that I am bad at this!! It’s a word game! I am good at word games!! At least I used to be. And frankly, if I don’t have that fact to hang my hat on, I’m not sure what’s left.

There HAS to be a secret trick to this game that I’m unaware of. Do any of you know what it is?? What am I missing?!? It’s got to be SOMETHING, and I am not yet willing to concede that it’s me.