…love Jillian

It is true.  I’ve pretty much stopped blogging the last couple months.  And the emails and questions about when I’m going to start again proves my lack of posts have not gone unnoticed.  But in my defense, have you seen Little Stuff?  Who has time to blog when they could be holding the best baby in the world?  Look at that face:

And this one:

What’s that?  You’ve read my Tweets about how the wee one sleeps through the night?  Oh, Ok.  Then, let’s just be honest  about my lack of blogging.  I’ve been a little bit torn on the content and direction I want to go.  See, having a baby makes you crazy hormonal and in my personal experience I have no business posting my crazy hormonal thoughts for the world to read.  Cause seriously, after you post something on the interwebs—it’s there forever.  And the things that have been on the forefront of my mind are not the types of things I want to post for my family, friends, and co-workers read. Or more importantly, the coworkers of my family and friends.  Some things are best kept to yourself…at least for now.

Also, since Little Stuff’s arrival I’m in crazy “get things done and organzied” mode.  And this blog is messy, unorganized, and I want to basically scratch the whole thing and start over.  If you could see the list of random tags/categories I have made and the 40 started but never finished post you would understand why the new OCD me wants to start over…also, I want a new layouot.  So, perhaps there will be a jillianranee.com facelift coming soon!  

In the meantime, I AM going to start posting baby updates again.  I can talk for hours and hours on the joys of motherhood and how much I love Little Stuff.  For instance, did you see my sweet little girl sitting in a bowl of candy on halloween:

I love how she could care less about how awesome it is to be sitting in an actual bowl of candy! 

Or the family photo we captured on Thanskgiving:

You want blog posts?  Well, you better prepare yourselves for baby overload!  

No Comments | In: Baby, blogging, Life | | #

Yesterday a co-worker invited me to be friends on The Facebook.  Now usually, I try to avoid being friends with people I work with on FB for various reasons but mostly because some things are best left out of the office. Sure, I have no qualms about blogging for complete strangers, acquaintances, and lord only knows who else but work people? Not so much. (Don’t roll your eyes, I know my logic is dumb—ANYONE could find and read this blog but for some reason, I’m thinking the majority of people I’m not interested in sharing my life with have better things to do than track down my tiny corner of the interweb : )
Anyway, I do like this particular work friend so I decided to peruse my status updates to see if there was anything incriminating on there (you know, like taking off at 3 or complaining about things that shouldn’t be complianed about) before I accepted and do you know what I found? I’m Baby Elizabeth obsessed. I cannot stop talking about The Wee One. 
I always thought I would be the type of mother who stayed the same. The mother that would have a little one and my outlook and priorities would stay pretty similar. But I’ve already turned into the mom that can’t think about anything else.  Her movements mark my day (I fully enjoyed feeling her hiccup on cue for 3 straight hours yesterday) and it’s apparently obvious that I can barely talk about anything else….
So for all you readers that miss the snarky comments and ridiculous stories, the only left to say is this: My name is Jillian and I’m obsessed with my baby.

1 Comment | In: Baby, Baby Bump, blogging | | #

This blog has been a therapeutic addition to my life.  It has given me an outlet to work out any frustration I have with my marriage, our dogs or work or whatever comes up but recently I’ve noticed I’ve really been censoring myself.  I suppose when I sit down to write and can’t come up with anything lighthearted to say I decide not to post.  And it’s really starting to bother me; Hubs and I have done tons of fun stuff and I wish I could muster up some enthusiasm to write about it.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not actually complaining about my life—my life is actually pretty great, it’s just that the yucky day to day details have been wearing on me in a way that makes me want to throw in the towel…So, in this moment I am going to list a handful of items that are desperately (and successfully I might add) trying to steal the thunder away from all the fun/funny stuff and hopefully we can get back to normal.

• No matter how I calculate our finances, Team Carter can shoot a monthly budget to hell in the matter of moments.  I need to learn to say no.




• I wish my family wouldn’t always blame Hubs for our impending (and by impending I mean months and months and months away) move to Lee’s Summit.  I found the neighborhood.  We picked the house.  And Hubs is in no way, shape, or form trying to pull me away from my family.




• Hubs will say yes to anything—taking the bathroom trash out on trash day, being on time, cleaning the garage, taking the bike rack off the truck, getting his paperwork together to get paid on contracting work, working out after work, following up on misc life issues, and ect ect ect but I still have to nag the crap out him to get results.  I’ve joked around about having him sign a piece of paper every time he says yes, but it’s really starting to wear on me.




• My job has set some ridiculous goals for me (and all the other sales people) that make it hard to believe for one minute those particular numbers are attainable.




• I’m missing my friends.  When I was single they were my lifeline to the world and now I’m starting to notice a major dip in friend time.   I feel like I barely see them.  I can only imagine how much worse its gonna get after we have kids




• Operation 20lbs (aka “Operation:  20lbs Might Have Been A Little Overzealous Buuuut My Clothes Are Fitting So Much Better) is going slow.  And by slow I mean, I’m going to need the rest of the winter to actually lose 20 lbs.  It so frustrating.

Don’t get me wrong, I know there are REAL problems out in the world: hunger, homelessness, work place violence, ozone alerts but somehow in my life these seem like real daily problems that build up and build up and build up until all I want to do is scream and so, I just say nothing.

So, since I can’t afford actual therapy, I’m going to start writing about my actual life.  The good, the bad, and the ridiculous.  And while I have no idea where it’s going to go, I’m hoping there will be more good/ridiculous than the yucky posts.

No Comments | In: Being an adult is lame, blogging | | #

It was brought to my attention today that I haven’t posted in a couple weeks…and in my defense I will say this:  my job is taking up more and more of my time everyday and that leaves less and less time for blogging (especially since when I’m not working I’m like busy doing other stuff.) 

   The lost weeks have been full of totally blog worthy events though….

• We went to Branson with my family and spent an amazing day on Table Rock Lake.  I didn’t even get sunburned.  We ate and shopped and ate some more!  I always thoroughly enjoy family time…especially when we are out doing stuff.




• Hubs’ longtime friend George came into town and stayed with us for the better part of the week.  He is so fun!  And he actually got Hubs and I out on a week night too (which doesn’t normally happen.)




• I finished up my summer class.  I’m super confident I landed an A in that class—or a B  




• Tyson passed his doggie daycare interview with flying colors (so now he has a place to stay when we go places…AND it’s right by Hubs’ work!  So no more puppy shuffle for me!  Yay!




• This last weekend Hubs and I went to Cincinnati for a dear friend’s wedding.  Time and life has taxed our long distance friendship but every time I see him it reminds me of super fun times and revives my initiative to make plans!  Did I mention how much I LOVE Robin?  I’m unbelievably happy for them!




• And yesterday Hubs and I reserved a lot for the building of our dream house.  So we are super excited to get that project underway!  

The rest of the week is full of work.  Measures, cold calls, AAKC meetings, and heat.  Have I mentioned how hot it is here?  Let’s just say when I got in my car this afternoon the temp gauge said 113.  So.  Hot.

No Comments | In: blogging, Family, Good Buddies, Our Home | | #

               I’ve been unemployed for a little over 2 months.  The only responsibility I have right now consists of feeding and watering the dogs (which Hubs usually does in the morning as I’m still sleeping) and finishing up this semester.  Today, I had NOTHING on my schedule except preparing for my Spanish Oral Interview and getting a Stats paper written—what did I do?  I checked Facebook, watched Ellen, blogged, ran with Tyson, played fetch with Maggie, and took a shower.  In my defense, sat down in front of my computer about 12 times, but something kept distracting me (seriously, have you seen the internet?  There are all kinds of distracters out there!) 

                In my life, it appears the less responsibility I have, the less I get done.  I noticed this syndrome back in high school when I waited tables too.  If I had 10 tables everyone had full drinks, warm food, and checks sitting in front of them at just the right moment.  If I had 1 table, I was probably slacking off in the back and that poor table had to look around for me and was usually dying of thirst.  Why is that?  When I was working I was always ready for school.  I always had my papers written and reviews completed….what happened to me?

                Tomorrow, I have a statistics paper due and need to speak in Spanish for 5 whole minutes!  Of course, none of that goes down until 5…so I still have time J

1 Comment | In: Being an adult is lame, blogging, Working is for the birds | | #

My grammy passed away last Friday and I’ve been trying to put together a post that really explains what it means to lose her. The void she left is great and difficult to articulate. So until I can get my thoughts together in an orderly manner that post will be filed under…….up and coming.

On a less personal and emotionally taxing note, DaShaun tracks readership on our websites. It was recently brought to my attention that jillianranee.com is getting double the traffic of his website dashaun.net. And if that wasn’t enough, it turns out his little 8 year old niece gets 3 times as many hits as poor poor DaShaun. (BTW: Little Whit doesn’t even know she has a website)

Hubs is a software architect and prides himself on being a geek. He’s had a website the entire time I’ve known him and for my fledgling site beat him is a small victory for the E! News battle we have almost weekly. (He wants to watch that G4 Geek News show as he likes to be up to date on all the new gadgets, toys, and lame technology breakthroughs. Lame.) And I like be well versed in all the celebrity breakups, hook ups, and meltdowns…you know, the important stuff that makes the world go round.

So, DaShaun, I know it might kill you but we will have to continue to watch E! News in order to aggressively defend my title as Website Visitor Winner!

Also, it might be a good idea for you to go ahead and subscribe to US Weekly as well. I know it really has nothing to do with this post other than I want one and it will save you a bundle. And since I just won the E! News battle I thought I would get while the getting is good. You know we pay 3.99 at the grocery checkout and a subscription is only 5.99 a month. Think of how much more fun we would have if I was actually focused on beating you at the price is right game and not reading the tabloids? Oh and did I mention it would save you a $132 dollars a year. I’m just saying.

Sidenote: I don’t have any idea who takes the time to read my mindless posts about my love of hot yoga, DJ Hero, and Kurt Warner’s wife…but thank you and keep it up!

No Comments | In: blogging | tags: blogging, DaShaun. | #