A day in the life of, me, an emerging, entrepreneur, business woman, mom . . . November 5, 2009

Breakfast: English Muffin

Load of laundry.
Check bank balance.  Call bank.  Wait on hold.  Problem fixed.
Check email.
Burn a silly movie I made to DVD.  Check it on TV.  It works!

Check leads of information from those follow on Twitter.  Read.  Read.  Read.  Take notes.  Print info.
Write blog post.
Steamy hot shower.
Walmart:  “Why is my bill $31.00?  Jeepers Cats, $14 for two bags of grapes?  God, how much were they a pound… $2.39!  Why didn’t I pay attention??  That’s the last of my fresh grape juice for the year.
At computer:  Supposed to be able to download audio books for free from my local library.  I have the business card right there in front of me telling me that it’s possible.  I look everywhere.  Can’t’ find a single spot to hook up to this feature.  Someone tell me why I can’t find this?  Why isn’t it straight forward??  Why, even when I dig around I still can’t find it?  This is taking too long.  Got to do something else related to business.

This is my library Love my library.

Lunch: Homemade hot cocoa

Dig deeper into Shelfari, to really learn this site.  Decide: this is really an awesome site.  Discover there’s an area for authors to create a page for themselves and their books.  Look at what other authors have done.  Did you know that Stephen King has written 75 books and 7 under a psudo name!!  Astounding.  Scanned to find out how to create an author page for John1′s.  Can’t figure it out.  WHY???????  Look some more.  No go.  WHY????????

Write this blog post.

Work on a document I’ve been creating.
Look at clock, 3:45, want to get the kids from school.  More work.  4:30, still want to get kids from school.  No time really.  Have so much to do.  Plus need to finish getting info together for meeting tomorrow night and have to factor in a class at Apple store tomorrow as well.  5:15.  Pointless to get kids from school.

End result:  Didn’t have any time to see my kids today.  I miss them.  That’s the crapper about divorce.  You have to purposefully go to see your children.  No time.  No see.  It sucks.  They don’t just stream in the door, shouting, “Hey mom!” drop their back packs on the floor, give you a hug and kiss, and tear off for the kitchen in search of a snack.  Instead your home echos hollow without their youthful voices scenting the air with it’s delicate fragrance. The silence made my heart ache and I drifted back to yesterday.  When I was playing around with Caleb.  We were being silly.  Laughing and teasing.  With Christmas coming I spontaneously asked him “What is the one thing you wish you could have?”  Without adding “for Christmas”,   Before I spoke those words I thought, he’d say, “to go to Disney for a week” or “to have my own laptop”.  However the moment the words left my lips I knew.   My breathing constricted.  The clock stopped ticking.  But it was too late to pull the question back.  If I could have inhaled them right back into my mouth, sucked them out of existence, I would have.  To avoid the, in our faces pain that would steal our joy and stab at his little heart and mine.  Instead when I inhaled my next breath the words that softly left his mouth, devoid of giggles were, “To have you and daddy together again.”  Sullen sadness filled the space.  I drew him to me.  We hugged each other into a deep embrace and held ourselves there.  Tears pooled in my eyes as I stroked his soft hair, “I wish that was the case too honey.  I wish we all lived together.  Oh how I wish.  But that just can’t be and it totally stinks.  It makes me sad too.”  A few minutes passed, we separated, and went on just a little less silly, a little less giggly.

Dinner: Mashed potatoes with white gravy made from the broth of the chicken thighs I cooked, and bread with butter: comfort food.

Eat and listen to Duma Key by Stephen King.
Talk to John2 for a while.
Finally put load of laundry into dryer.
Brush teeth.  Change out of day clothes into night clothes.
Broke a nail.  Crap.  Well there’s a pattern on my right hand now, every other nail is short.
Think about doing dishes.
Try to eject DVD I burned earlier from inside Mac.  Won’t eject.  Look up on internet what to do.  Do all three steps.  Great.  It’s stuck.  So what now?  Don’t want to take in to genius bar. . .  Light bulb goes on.  I took it out earlier and viewed it on my TV . . .
Work on a new blog post that came to me.  Edit it.
Come over and edit this blog post.
Result: three blog posts today.  That’s a record

Night, Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-who doesn’t think she’s going to post all three posts today.  I’m saving at least one for another day.  Want to go over it again.

Halloween FUN! November 1, 2009

All I can say is FUN! I had a fun, terrific, eventful, peaceful, happy day with my kids. Halloween is always a wild card day, all the energy surging from anticipating Trick or Treating, last minute things that can go awry with costumes, someone can get an upset stomach, and more. It can be a perfect atmosphere for break down somewhere. But this year, none of that. Dan got a little edgy wanting to go, but that was it.

-I quit working on my business and arrived at their home arrived at 2 and began to bake Halloween cookies for all my kiddos. I made the Nestle Toll House Pumpkin cookies and the Pillsbury Shape cookies with the ghosts. Pillsbury won hands down.
-Put the face tattoo on Zachary as he wanted to be a tiger. I was a little nervous about this full face tattoo working out well. But it pretty much turned out fine. We had some parts that broke apart, but luckily between his glasses and the long bangs he sports it covered the discrepancy.
-Around 3:30 I did Graces make-up, she had a party to attend before Trick or Treating. Then I did Caleb’s.
-Sat down at one of their computers and researched some more about E-books and sunk deeper into a new forum I joined for bloggers, it’s called Problogger. So far it seems quite helpful. I’ll keep you posted.
-Then it was time to do Dan’s make-up, which he wanted me to hurry because he was going Trick or Treating with, you guessed it, Brent. He had waited a bit long to come and get ready. I had sent his sister to get him earlier but he decided it was too early, it could wait. Sooooo, he ended up being the one having to deal with the time it took me to do it and for the pictures that I insisted we were going to take. He made it out the door with a bit of time to spare, but you know how kids are. They want to get going…..
-Then Grace returned. John2 arrived and changed. Caleb dressed. Leah, John2′s sort of girl friend arrived. We left.
-We went house to house for about a half hour and Sarah and her friend arrived to join us. More fun!!! I was so glad to have Sarah with us her schedule with her school I don’t see much of her at all anymore. Sort of catch glimpses of her.
-Took lots of pictures. Took a little video, but doubt it will be any good, too dark.
-Finally 2 1/2 plus hours later we returned to their house to size up the booty and compare what treasures lay within their bags. I have to say Grace is awfully possessive of her Peanut Butter cups! Man. John2 split his with me. Zach let me have a couple pieces from his bag then said, “Don’t eat it all!” As if!
My kids are loaded with more candy than I think they’ve ever pulled in. Those hefty sacks are going need monitoring and piece mealing! Scott, their father, will be complaining in the morning when he sees all they got.
-I got a hankering for a movie, but none of us, me included, wanted to do a late show at the theater. So we scanned Hulu. Free movie streaming from the internet, furniture realigned, Leah, John2, Daniel, Me, Zach, Ben, Grace blankets drawn up around the chin, Caleb snuggled up under my arm and off we went into “A Dog’s Breakfast”. OMG I laughed till it hurt. We all laughed till it hurt. It is a dark comedy, perfect for Halloween. It edges up to Halloweeny material. I’m not saying more than that. I don’t want to ruin it for you. Just watch this movie!! I intend to own it one day. I will add that thankfully Dan and Cal zonked out. Kept me from having to tell them they needed to go to bed because the content would creep them out too much. But that was only because of their age.

Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-who will post more pictures tomorrow, now it’s 1:47 AM and I need to hit the hay!

Okay, this buiness woman, entrepreneur is back to work . . . October 23, 2009

I love craving pumpkins. Love their flickering lights at night.

Well, “back to work” is sort of a broad use of the word “work”. Can I count chatting with you for just a bit as work? And going out and finding that fun Halloween picture at the side work? Hummm. I wonder, if I worked in a cubical would my boss walk by, glance in, see me typing away on my blog, and consider me working . . .

I wanted to take a quick minute and let you know that I found the pumpkin in the last post and this one at this site: dreamstime I really like this site. It’s loaded with free and for a fee stock photos. Very nice quality and very usable images! There are loads of photos that are only 20 cents. The ones for a fee, you buy what equates to a loaded store card for the amount you want, make purchases, and work your way down to zero. Good deal. Easy. Fun. Meets all my criteria when I’m considering participating in something. The only part that wasn’t fun was reading the terms. Ugh. It went on and on and on. Please! Where’s the simple?? Really couldn’t they have said it in like, a few sentences? I just want to say that reading that was nearly a feat for me. I really do not like reading through all those term thingys, avoid them like the plague. Just seeing the length nearly made me click onward. The only reason I didn’t was my preview of the sight convienced me want to see if they were EASY to use and really, really free. From my reading, and by no means trust my reading I’m no copyright lawyer, the free is free without snags attached, except in the case of making like more than 10,000 copies of literature with the image on it, then you need another license.

Okay, now I must get back to work. Need to do emails and continue scanning for a web site template. Oh you don’t know yet do you? Yesterday John2 and I began the big search for a template that was the perfect match for our company Free the Mind. We scanned through bunches of templates and sites. That was how I found the link to that new photo stock site, which caused me to go through a big detour, got all sentimental and inspired when I saw that pumpkin and birthed the Halloween post. So did we find THE template, not yet? We’ve found a few we liked, but there hasn’t been that, “That’s it” moment yet.

Well. Really. Now. I’ve got to get back at the business at hand. Emailing, template searching . . .

Love ya,
Happy Halloween Holiday!
Theresa Jane

Feeling like one of Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs: Droopy . . . October 22, 2009

It’s 1:14 am and I’m droopy. Droopy is one of the names of those seven dwarfs that hung out with Snow White right? If there isn’t one, then there should be. And I’m so droopy I don’t care to do a search to find out. Someone leave a comment with their names, then I’ll know for sure. LOL.

It’s been a full day. John2 and I had two phone meetings today, one with that guy I mentioned before that’s been in film for over 20 years and helped us before. Then we had one with just us. Among other meeting results we, well he more than me, came up with the perfect logo idea for our company: Free The Mind Productions. Completely different then the direction we were going in. But that’s the way creativity moves. John1 grabbed the idea and ran. In no time flat he was emailing me his creation and the stationary! He even free drew the picture on the computer. It’s not super detailed mind you, but if I were to go about doing it I wouldn’t have had all that done in under an hour and half, tweaks included. But then he did see it clearly in his mind, so that totally helps. Being an artist totally helps. Working with a publishing program for years also helps. Well, I get some of the credit pie, because WE had the meeting. I mean without me where would we have been We’re letting the logo sit for a few days then we’ll come back and look at it again and finalize. Once done I’ll share it!

We lost our graphic artist that’s worked with us for a year. So I’ve been scrambling to find a new one. We have a client that wants a book printed. EEEkkkk. Been emailing and calling people for a couple days. Besides talking with a few, I viewed a boat load of portfolios today. They’ve all merged into one sticky blob up there in my brain.

Worked a teeny bit more on understanding optimizing. I went to Google AdWords and used the Keyword tool to see what were keywords for my blog and Red Book and Cotton’s web site. Took awhile to figure out where the heck the page was to actually put the web sites in, then it was sticky and didn’t want to work, but then, it generated a list. I also tried to see where the rankings were on our sites. Don’t worry I’m not suffering from grandiose thoughts. I didn’t think we’d be soaring to the top of the charts or anything. I was just curious. Took it a long time for it to do it’s thing and when it was done I had no earthly idea what it was telling me. Couldn’t find a “translator” anywhere. Blah!

Saw my kids for awhile. Zach true to form said, “I don’t have any homework.” Got ornery when I pressed the matter. Zach’s teachers seem to have been on a “no homework streak” for a couple months now. I smell failure in the wind. SIGH. Helped Dan learn his spelling list. Test tomorrow. Had it been today, wellllllll, let’s just say it’s a good thing it wasn’t. When we were done he asked, “Want to go to McDonald’s? I’m stressed. I’ll pay.” He whipped out his wallet and produced a 5 spot, proof of his creditability.” Bless his little heart. He used the last of his b-day money to go out with me. What was he stressed about? I asked and he said, a touch forlorn, “Oh I don’t want to talk about that. Anything but that.” And that’s what we did.

Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-whose putting her backside in bed, it’s now 2:30 am. Hope it’s not too late I feel my second wind kicking in. . .