Newsworthy

Things have been a little crazy around the Johnson household the past couple of weeks. Work is insane and Miss Emma is one big handful. Luckily we have a lot of people willing to help out. (Thanks for picking up the slack the past couple of weeks Mom! I know Emma loves spending time with her Nanny!)

Jeremy's dad had surgery last week to remove some skin cancer. Luckily they were able to remove it all and he's going to be good as new. But, it really got me thinking about my absolute love of the tanning bed. Maybe I need to give that up. But I'm not the type of girl to go around pasty white in the summer. So, if anybody has any recommendations on a good self tanner please pass it along. Otherwise, my vanity and lust for golden skin may outweigh my good intentions!

Also, I chopped off some more hair. Jeremy threatened to ban me from the salon and has decided to grow his hair out as retribution. We'll see how long that lasts! I had to do it though. It is just too stinking hot to have all my thick unruly hair on my neck! The bangs are still the same but the length only comes to just below my chin and the back is stacked. Love.

I've got a lot of projects going on at the homestead. Our bathroom renovation is still ongoing. We've gotten a little lazy since our shower is working. (Maybe I should correct that-the hubs has gotten a little lazy. ) It's tough keeping him motivated because he would rather be spending time with us than working. But hey, I am not one to tolerate disorder and we had a come to Jesus confrontation the other night. The toilet bowl sitting on my carport, added to a hellish day at work, was the last straw. We are not white trash and I went into orbit about the toilet that has been sitting on my carport since we began renovations in MAY!! A girl can only take so much. I love my hubs, truly, but I can't vent to him because it will just delay the project even further. So, sorry guys-you get stuck hearing it! As much as I hate to miss out on my Emma time I may need to see if I can let her spend some time with a grandparent one Saturday afternoon so I can get my house back in order. (Can you hear the extreme guilt I suffer at times for being a working mom?)

I've also prepared Jeremy for my thoughts on Emma's bday party-cowgirl theme! Yee Haw! I'm going pink and purple instead of the traditional blue and red because I've found some awesome stuff online. And I can have the party outdoors because a lot of decorations will already be in place via my fall decorating frenzy. Jeremy already has his to-do list of projects that need to be finished up outdoors. Here's hoping he pulls through and I don't have to cancel or move the party at the last minute!

Going back to work now!

The Smackdown

I'm usually not a confrontational person. My motto is "can't we all just get along?!" I can handle confrontation but absolutely dread them, I get this huge knot in my stomach and just want to throw up. Luckily no one else can tell! Jeremy on the other hand thrives on this crap. I have watched him put people in their place so brutally and effectively he may as well have cut them off at the knees and left them bleeding in the street. Then he walks away with a smile on their face. (I actually admire this at times and its one of the reasons we are so good together-opposites and all that.) But a few things happened this week that made me forget about my hatred of confrontations and want to put the smackdown on several folks Jeremy style.

First was an incident at daycare. Emma's normal teacher (who we LOVE) was in and out for a week or so following the sudden death of her husband. In the meantime a part time girl was filling in for Emma's class. I will refer to her from here on out as Little Miss Thing. Well, I had noticed that Emma was acting a little strange-more cranky and upset at night, a little harder to leave at school in the morning. But nothing I attributed to any problems, just a normal toddler thing. Well, LMT ran up to me one afternoon when I was picking up Emma and went on and on about how terrible she had been, kicking and punching, sitting in time out all afternoon, etc. I thought about it all weekend and talked to her normal teacher on Monday who said she didn't know of any problems and Emma was good as gold for her. I tried talking to LMT again and she had no answers for why Emma was in time out and when I tried to dig a little deeper, like "what prompted her to kick b/c it's not normal for her" she still didn't have an answer and TURNED HER BACK ON ME AND WALKED AWAY! Argh! Long story short, I pieced together a few things and comments from Emma's teacher and I think LMT and Emma just don't click. I'll be damned if my baby gets stuck in time out all the time b/c LMT has some issues. So, I've got a call out for the director of the daycare and Smackdown 1 will be underway. In the meantime I've made sure she is never alone with LMT and I'm going to make sure and sic the director on LMT. She will be sorry to have messed with my baby when all is said and done.

If you see posters like this hanging all over town just ignore them. One of my customers is to blame.

Their company is not pleased about the awesome new contact and customer I am bringing on board at the RR (they think it will be competition and apparently I am not allowed to work with any customers other than them) and decided to call me everything but a white person to my boss. My ethics were called into question and a few other things that were just way too personal and offensive for me to sit back and ignore. So, I channeled my inner Jeremy and set up an appointment for Smackdown 2. My boss was so worried about how this meeting would play out that he flew in from Florida with only 12 hours advance notice to attend with me and have my back. Unfortunately, they backed down considerably in person so I had to reign myself in and the Smackdown was very disappointing. My archnemesis at the company was not present so while I was all geared up for blood I had to settle for only a small skirmish instead. Argh! And yes, I seriously have an archnemesis. You. Have. No. Idea. After the meeting I was joking with my boss that he should get a refund on his ticket because he really didn't get to see a show. Which I guess was a good thing. What's wrong with me that I still would have preferred the Smackdown!?

Our 4th of July holiday weekend can be summed up in a few pictures:

Summer Time!

To celebrate Jeremy's last Saturday off for the conceivable future we took Emma to the Alligator Farm in Hot Springs. ( I know I'm way behind in posting this but work has been hella crazy.) This was the first time I'd been to the Alligator Farm too and I've lived here my whole life, crazy. But Emma loved it. A portion of the Farm is set aside as a petting zoo with baby goats, deer, donkeys, etc. The deer were super friendly. Probably because we had bread. The only animal Emma didn't like was the donkey. It was so much bigger than her and it kept following her around trying to lick her face. Jeremy and I thought it was hilarious but M wasn't having any of that.

Here's the offending donkey and Emma trying to get away as quickly as possible. The baby goat was more to her liking.

There was also a wolf that she desperately wanted to play with because it was a "big dog". And she was not interested in the alligators at all because she couldn't pet them. yeah. My child has a love of all things dangerous.

In other news Jeremy has finally gotten placed on one set shift, so no more rotating and going in at all hours of the day and night. Yay! He's strictly a 5 to 5 guy now. The only downside is that he works every Saturday now; his 2 days off per week are Wednesday and Sunday. I'm not going to complain though because at least now he's home every night.

My work week was slightly less great. You know how bad things always come in 3's? I'll gloss over the first two because nobody cares about a personal issue or market share initiatives. The third happened Wednesday morning and involves supreme stupidity. Not mine, of course, but one of the genuises that work for us. Apparently one of our crews coupled into some boxcars to pull out of a plant (my customer of course) but didn't bother to check if they were empty or still attached to anything. Surprise! The boxcars' doors were wide open with product sitting inside and the dock plates were still attached. So, when our boy wonders pulled the cars out it destroyed the dock plates and a good portion of the customer's dock. Super. I always love to have those talks with customers. But, we're off today so maybe the weekend will turn out better.

Happy 4th of July!