Black Friday

I survived.......left house at 2:30am, back home at 4:05pm.

Not as good as I would have liked, not as bad as I feared.

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My Grandpa

My grandpa died early this morning. His incredible strength and fighting spirit was with him until the very end. His life was a wonderful 99 years long here on earth.....he's now with his 6 brothers and sisters who pre-deceased him long ago, my grandmother who died when I was 6, and his son, my dear father, who died in 1997 at the way too young age of 55 .

Ties are non-existant with my mother and her side of the family, so it feels like I've lost what I had left of my family.

Obama family

We were standing in line at the store yesterday and A was looking at the magazines in the checkout line. She goes "look, mommy, the WHOLE family is chocolate like me, even the mommy and daddy!". We know a lot of families who look like ours, that don't match. She sounded incredulous that the Obama family actually matches.

I've been relieved to see occasionally pics of Sasha Obama with fuzzy looking hair - if the President's daughter can have fuzzy looking hair, we are in good company!

Tip of the day for tiny braids past their prime (yes, I didn't actually get to hair this past weekend) - braid the braids. I moisturized and put the tiny braids into two larger braids and tied ribbons on the end. They look very, very cute and really freshen up the entire look and disguise the fuzz. We rarely do large braids or ponys because they don't work for us. But made out of tiny braids are perfect. She reminds me of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.

hair and other ramblings...

I REALLY need to do A's hair today. I last did it the weekend before Halloween, so it's lasted a good long time. A asked for small, individual braids last time, which I rarely do. Why? Because I hate taking them out. They take absolutely forever to take out - about as long as they did to put in. And then, I still need to do hair after I spend a few hours taking them out.

I feel I should have a better attitude about doing hair and not dread it sometimes. This time of year is tough - I have to work at least 8 hrs today (Saturday), and about 6 or 7 hrs on Sunday. And still find about 4 hrs somewhere to do hair. I'm finding work increasingly unrewarding - retail is really a brutal contact sport. But I do look forward to working incredibly hard, motivating my team, and that elated feeling when we really nail a major event. The hard work and stress has a purpose. But these days, all the hard work and incredible energy, and doing more work with less employees, is rewarded by....total failure. It's hard to play the game when you know there is almost no chance at all to post a win, to meet a goal. Must be how it feels to be the Detroit Lions :) If the goals are not met (which are set at the beginning of the year), I'm rated a below expectations, or a far below expectations on my performance review. There are no exceptions - the plan is the plan - period. 3 below expectations (rated every 6 months) and you are replaced.

My house is a mess, I'm hopelessly behind on laundry. The laundry that did manage to get done (by Wood, not me!) is piled on the furniture in the family room. We have overdue library books and videos from the video store. The kids have a birthday party to go to today, and I remembered to get a present, but not anything to wrap it in. I feel like everyone else can manage their household, just not us.

storm over

We got about 12" - 15" total - not as bad as expected. Looks like daily snowfall, but smaller amounts, every day for the next week. I had to stay at work to replace those who couldn't make it in, and we should have closed at 9pm. But the gals in the Salon ran late with a client. So I was at work yesterday from 9am - 10:30pm. It's so going to be a loooong weekend.

Oh, and the dentist - he asked ME if A could be older than turning 5 in December. I told him she was. He said "do you know that for sure?". I said yes. He said, while not conclusive, he thought by looking at her teeth development that she was about 6 months older, at least.
She's getting one of her permanent teeth BEHIND her baby tooth. Looks like another candidate for braces someday. Big brother B and A both had braces. At age 6.5, G hasn't lost any teeth yet.

Snow, snow, snow

Big storm last night - we got about 6" -8" in the city - much more in surrounding cities, where all the schools are closed. Winds last night were in excess of 26 mph. Today they are still quite strong. Our local schools aren't closed today, despite severe snow warnings and 10-12" of more snow to come. Will definitely not help my business, and I'll have to cut staffing today and tomorrow considerably.

Miss A goes to the dentist today - she is excited beyond belief, for some unknown reason! I'm already tired of bundling the kids up, boots and snowpants to go everywhere. We'll be doing it until May, so I'd better get used to it.

The unknown

Someone asked me at work yesterday how we could add a dog to our family without ever meeting them. Wasn't it hard to base a decision so permanent based on a picture and a friend's 4 hr visit? Weren't we scared of the unknown?

We welcomed a child, our daughter with open hearts and arms and all the info we had on her was a single photo and three partial sentences describing her - "laughs out loud", "best attached to caregivers", "walks holding onto table".

Sometimes, you just have to trust and have faith.