14 years...wow time flies!

Tomorrow is our 14 year anniversary. Being the last minute shopper that I am, I of course have not bought him a gift yet. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I even bought him one last year (bad wife!).

Here's what my reminder email (which only came 4 days ago!) suggests...

Traditional 14th wedding anniversary gifts have a theme of Ivory.
A contemporary or modern 14th anniversary gift has a theme of Gold Jewellery.
The flowers associated with this anniversary are Dahlia.
The Gemstone list shows Jewellery and Moss Agate associated with this Wedding Anniversary.

This is the same email My Man received, but I'm sure he'll be much better at coming up with a gift idea for me (he's so good at this!)....me on the other hand, I suck at this. So basically my choices are ivory or gold jewelry (who spells it with 2 l's??). Neither of which makes sense for a gift for him.

Someone suggested I get him a frame for his desk (with a photo of me in it of course!) and I'm thinking, if I can find one with ivory in it, that would satisfy the traditional gift idea. BUT, that would mean I would need to (1) go shopping and (2) successfully find what I'm looking for when I go shopping. Have I mentioned how much I hate shopping?

Happy 40th Old Man!

So my husband has been picking on me since my birthday (in mid-January) and now it's finally HIS 40th birthday (never marry a younger man if he's the type that likes to poke fun at your age!).
But this post is not to rag on him about his age (I do that in person) but to share what might be one of the best presents I've given him in a LONG time! This year I contacted a fellow blogger (not sure I can call myself a blogger just yet!) Rick Green of Organized Doodles. He does caricatures from afar (he lives in Oregon) and I think he does a bang-up job! Here's a link to his post on my dear husband's illustration:
http://organizeddoodles.blogspot.com/2008/03/shellys-gift-some-difficult-lessons.html
Apparently I am a high-maintenance client...but that's a whole 'nother post for another day!

I think My Man was sufficiently surprised & pleased by his birthday gift. :o)

life observations...

so i sit down at our production meeting & my dear husband (& biz partner) is still talking on the phone (instead of coming to the meeting). i was totally frustrated because my computer had been running SO s-l-o-w all day that i couldn't get prepared for the meeting (so i essentially had nothing to add to the meeting!). someone says - maybe you should talk to "the IT dept" about it (that was a joke..my dh is the IT dept!). of course, that won't help me at all because i have a multitude of IT issues going on that he has yet to fix...so why would my slow day prompt any kind of action at this point?!

after entertaining the troops with my long tirade of what i've been going thru today (i didn't say it was a productive production meeting, did i? LOL)...my dh finally comes to help me find out why my computer is running so slow. turns out i had tried to send an email with a 30 MB file attached to it! D.U.E. my dh calls to me as he walks out (that's pronounced doo-eee & it stands for Dumb User Error). great - i've been annoyed all day & it was my own durn fault? life just doesn't get any better than this does it!! /me rolls my eyes...

so i announce to the meeting attendees that i REALLY need to get out of work early today (one of them looks at their watch & sez "you know it's already 4:30, right?")....and i then explain that leaving at 5pm for me is "early". of course, i still didn't get out until 5:40 which means i'm hauling butt to get to daycare to p/up the kids. i really must get this life & work balance thing figured out.

i saw an interesting quote today....it was paraphrased but i can't find it...but i did find the original:
I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing. (Gloria Steinem)

this is SO true in my life. i swear my dh takes for granted that i'm the one that drops off the kids at daycare & picks them up (mostly). i'm the one that takes them to the dr visits & talks to their teachers. i'm the one (seems) to do most of the caregiving because he's so busy at work. but we work together and we both have our biz responsibilities...but i don't think that he feels a need to find work/life balance....but i do. and i want that for both of us...but how can you get someone else to view that need when they are seemingly happy just being busy at work all the time instead of "wanting" to be at home with the family? i'm not saying he doesn't want to be home...and i'm not saying that he doesn't spend time at home...but i look at my work/life balance and i recognize that it's lopsided to the work side of things...and i can see that his life is even more lopsided to the work side of things....and i want us both to find more balance. i'm afraid that the harder i work to make the life side more balanced, the more he'll "think" he has to work harder to enable me to have that time.