Inherited Traits...kinda...

I was feeding Evan last night and noticing that he had quite the stubborn streak already and I got to wondering….exactly how much of our personality traits are inherited and how many are just because we are raised by our parents and end up taking on traits they have. I kind of thing that a lot of it is genetic predispositions to certain personality traits, but I won’t bore you with that. Instead, I got to thinking about what I may have “inherited” from my parents. Look wise, we know that I look NOTHING like most of family. The running joke is that I was switched at birth. Despite that I have inherited some pretty strong personality traits from my folks…for better or worse.

• Like Evan, my stubborn side. When I dig my heels in, look out. And I didn’t stand a chance because I get this from both of my parents.
• My ability to guilt trip. This totally comes from my mother. The woman had the ability to make you feel absolutely horrid about the most trivial of things. I can’t count the number of times where she didn’t even have to raise her voice (though she usually did) to have me in tears and wrought with guilt. I have used this trait to my advantage in my teaching career and I must say I’m pretty darn good at it (and clearly super modest too). If you’ve ever been on the other end of one of my guilt trips, I’m sorry. If you haven’t considering yourself lucky.
• •My work ethic. My dad is not college educated and yet has managed to work himself up from an entry level position in a local manufacturing facility to a small business owner. And all because he works his butt off. I know that I can certainly be lazy from time to time, but when push comes to shove I’m a pretty darn hard worker too.
• My singing voice….totally from my mom…it sucks. My sister got the good voice from my dad (who has the uncanny ability to sing any pop song and make it sound Frank Sinatra-esque).

What “traits” have you gotten from your parents?

 

He hates me....

I figure I’ll make it a two post day considering that its Friday and I’m done with work in 30 minutes and because I need to vent.

I have neglected posting about work on here….not because it hasn’t been active, but because I’ve been venting through email with my co-workers instead (and the thought occurred to me that those could be hilarious to read also…too bad I delete them all…). I have come to the conclusion that my boss hates me. And its not just me. Ask anyone I work with and they’ll tell you the same thing….I get treated much more harshly than anyone else. Case in point…

1. He has made comment to other co-workers that I would like to be an intern. Mostly this is because I like things neat and organized…both things which he is not. So if things get messy I clean up after him….so I want to be an intern. 
2. I am his personal secretary and he enjoys that way too much. Because my master’s degree in curriculum development means that I should mail out your letters and order food for your workshops. Thanks.
3. He will make comment to everyone else about how my work sucks….even after I’ve done exactly what he’s asking and have the emails to prove it.
4. The other day I approached to ask a very simple yes or no question….I very politely and somewhat quietly said, “Hey, N***?....” to which he responded all flustered and snippy…”wait, your third on my list”….There was only one other person anywhere near him. Jerk. You could have just said one minute.
5. He constantly tries to catch me doing things I’m not supposed to be doing. He is known to burst into a room where I have gone to work and then act disappointed when he finds that I am, in fact, engaged in productive activities. He has even taken to showing up to the office on his days off….I swear with the purpose of catching me doing something I’m not supposed to. This has led me to set my desktop image as a screenshot of my desktop when I was being productive….just in case

Luckily, his general snippiness is lessened by the fact that he is the most anal retentive person I have ever met and I find this hilarious. He makes sure that….

1. He doesn’t come into contact with anything BPA related….including receipt paper (really?!?) 
2. He thinks that everything causes cancer.
3. He bakes things with all kinds of low fat substitutes….just wrong.
4. He thinks caffeine is the devil and will get all red in the face when discussing how we will not give it to children.

I know there’s more, but its Friday and I’m stuck for idea. That and I’m sure there are only two people reading this right now that find this even remotely entertaining. If you made it this far….congratulations….now go have a drink.

Rules Schmools.....

Rules are made to be broken right? Especially fashion rules…


I have never claimed to be fashion forward…or even very fashion conscious. As long as my clothes cover up my bits and don’t make me look like hippo I don’t worry about too much else, much to my mother’s dismay.

My mom is very fashion forward. She is 50 and her wardrobe makes mine look like the old lady’s. We’ve gotten to a point now where we laugh at my numerous fashion faux pas, but it was a pretty big source of strife growing up. At least now we can laugh about it. Case in point…

I showed up to her house a few weeks back with Evan in tow. She scooped him up and once she had smothered him with kisses began to examine his outfit…which is when she noticed the socks. I couldn’t find two matching socks so he had on one white dress sock and one white baby tube sock. At which she busted out laughing and proceeded to tell me that as a child I used to think it was acceptable to wear two different socks as long as they were the same color….and apparently I’m passing that along to Evan.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I still wear different socks on a regular basis. In all honesty, no one notices if I have on two black dress socks but one of them has an every so subtle pinstripe to it and the other doesn’t. Or maybe they do and they don’t tell me. And who cares what kind of socks I have on if no one can see them? If I’m wearing long pants and boots…I may even wear two colored socks completely! And I’ll sit at my desk smugly all day knowing that I am totally being a rule breaker 

Barefoot and hormonal....

Ah pregnancy.  Let me preface this by saying that if you take away my irrational penchant for pancakes and bacon (both food that I despise normally) and my insistance on doing handstands through my pregnancy so I could see my center of balance changing (as a side note...nine month pregnant handstands just don't work no matter what you try)...I was a very sane pregnant lady.  I def didn't glow and all that jazz, but I wasn't that crazy prego lady.  And I can say that because my husband doesn't read this and he's possibly the only person who would disagree with that statement.  I did, however, have a few irrational pregnancy stories that looking back on make me giggle.

For starters, I was a MASSIVE pregnant lady.  My 5'2" short torso-ed frame had nowhere for poor little man to go but out.  As evidence, here's my halloween pictures...keep in mind that this is me at the seven month mark....I still had two months to go and already that's some belly.

That's a freaking belly.  Moral of the story....I was clearly pregnant.  I was in my last few weeks and hubby and I decided to go out to dinner.  By this point I was used to people asking about the baby and how I was feeling, etc.  For some reason, that night we made it through the entire outing without one person commenting.  We settled into the car to head home when a shocking thought hit my mind and the tears started to flow.  Poor hubby, having no idea what the problem was, attempted to weed it out of me in between sobs. I choked out, "No one said anything about the baby....they must all think I'm just fat!" He sat back in his seat, gave me the side eye, put the car in gear and just drove off.  Hmm....

The only other crazy prego thing I did was fight to stay in work (really!).  The docs had wanted me out about a month before little man was born because of my blood pressure and for some odd reason I insisted that I HAD to work.  Hell...if you told me today that I could stay home on my fat butt, watch re-runs of Teen Mom, and have an excuse to do nothing and still get paid I would be running out the door...

What about you?  Any good prego stories?

Unknown

Today's 60 second blog post is about things people don't know about me...hmm....considering I'm kind of an open book this could be tough, but here goes.

1.  I have HORRIBLE road rage.  Though I'm normally a very calm, level-headed person...get on my bumper and you will get brake checked...cut me off and you will get tailgated, cursed out, and probably flipped the bird.  It's bad.
2.  I'm acutally quite shy.  Despite the job I have and how I come across I get very nervous in new social situations.  I can hold it together really well, but inside I'm probably dying.
3.  I fight a battle with laziness daily.  I wasn't always this way, but I chalk it up to never having any real downtime....
4.  I'm a huge nerd...actually if you know me you know this...never mind....

Okay, time's up.  That wasn't too good.  Tomorrow isn't a timed post and is sure to be better...

Believe

My 60 second post of today is around the word believe...as in "I can't believe I just did that!"  I have two...one serious...one not so much so i'll write for 120 second today.

Here's the first....
As they placed the very pink, very squinty, very warm little bundle of skin into my arms I thought to myself I can't believe I just did that.  I can't believe that I just brought the most perfect little man into the world...can't believe that I am a mom....can't believe that this little guy means more to me than anything else in the world ever has. 

And the second.....
As a biology teacher I am sometimes faced with hilarious situations, but being the mature teacher I am I have to deal with them in an adult like manner.  I'll never forget the first time a student, my most goody goody student mind you, replaced the word organism with the word orgasm while answering a question.  I turned to the board with tears in my eyes and shoulders shaking from silent, held back laughter....I couldn't believe that I was laughing at this poor students mishap.  I hope she isn't permenantly scarred.

Love

I figure its time for an update….and a peek at my goal for this week. I stumbled across a blog called One Minute Writer that posts a prompt each day and asks that you write about it for one minute. Since I usually don’t blog because of the time constraints I thought this might be a good way to get some things onto paper. I’ve decided to aim for it each day this week (with the exception of today because I’ll do my update for the day today). I’m not promising things will be deep or insightful and they will totally be stream of consciousness writing, but maybe it’ll lead to something.


Evan is going to be 6 months old at the end of the month. I have no idea where the time has gone! He is sitting up, rolling over both ways, and is possibly the smiliest baby I’ve ever seen….and that smile can melt hearts…and it does on a regular basis. My Mr. Charmer is also figuring out already that he has mommy wrapped around his little finger…uh oh.

This whole mommyhood adventure has lead me to reflect lately about the human capacity to love. Over the past months the amount of love that I’ve been doling out has dramatically increase. What amazes me is that it doesn’t get spread any thinner. How is it that we find room in our hearts to give more and more and not short change anyone along the way? I don’t know the answer to that…doubtful anyone does…but it really is amazing how big one’s heart can get.