Doorbell

I discovered the source of my door bell chime yesterday. I changed the battery on the button part, but I never knew where the actual 'ding dong' came from. I had searched the whole house for it, and gave up. Then someone rang it yesterday, and I heard it in the basement.

It came from a plug in box that I never knew the use of. I figured it was a carbon monoxide detector or something.

I plugged it in upstairs, and it works great. It only took me three years to learn that.

Info In the Wrong Hands

Today, I looked up my friend's number on yellow.com and found her husband's name in the search results. This afternoon, I dialed the number and hung up right away because I couldn't talk right then.
I had some news to tell her tonight, so I called the number from my 'outgoing calls' list and a woman answered. I just assumed it was her, and said
"Guess what?...[my exciting news]"
She didn't understand what I was talking about.
"Is this Alejandra?" I said.
She said "No it's Carey."
I thought she said Karen at first, because I knew that Karen, my piano student's Mom, was on my 'missed calls' list. So I start talking to her like she came over for piano lessons today.
Then it comes out that she's Carey, not Karen. So I assume it's Kerri, my Herbalife customer, since I tried to call her recently as well. I tell her
"This is Joellyn from Herbalife."
She says: "Oh, okay, so what were you calling your friend about?"
So I'm trying to explain to her the background of my news, and why it's exciting. I'm wondering why she doesn't want to talk about the samples I gave her a week ago. So I ask:
"Did you try those samples yet, or get a chance to look at them?"
She again didn't know what I was talking about.

So after three assumptions, I have no clue who this lady is, and why she's in my 'outgoing calls' list. I tell her the last name of my friend, and it turns out she has the same last name. I ask her if her husband's name is 'Micah'. She's like "No, it's John".
So, now that we were both totally confused, we said it was nice to meet eachother, and good-bye.

After I hung up, I reverse searched the phone number I dialed. The search results shows a Micah's home phone number the same as this Carey and John's phone number, at two different addresses. So maybe one of the addresses is just a mailbox somewhere and these are totally different people. It was just really weird.

Maybe one day all those people will meet eachother, and be like 'Whoa, we all know Joellyn'.

Spa Night

JR is taking a long time giving John Waller a ride. So, Filip and I decided to have a spa treatment at home. We both got facials, and a sea salt exfoliant on our legs. Actually, Filip got the sea salt exfoliant on his whole body since he's so small. Now our skin is so youthful and exuberant. I think Filip looks 10 years younger.

I think every time JR gets stopped by an salesman in the mall, he ends up buying some kind of spa quality skin care set that he'll use once. We were up to 3 different salt/sugar scrubs. Plus we have this mineral mud mask that you wash off using a magnet, and it leaves your skin moisterized with minerals. Don't even ask me how much that cost. Not to mention the natural manicure set. I had to give away some stuff, because there is no way we will use it all.

Back to Basics

JR got a job as a server at Cracker Barrel. He really likes it, and is bringing home some decent cash. We're down to one car, so Filip and I drop him off and pick him up. It's fun for Fil, because we get to play with the toys in the country store.

We've taken several losses this year and last, with real estate, and my own business. Also my credit is shot. I'm glad we finally have some regular income we can count on. So now we're starting to live like normal people. It will take a while to get back on our feet, but at least there's a real game plan now. Plus JR gets half-off meals. Yesss! He also gets 20% off in the store. That means I get discount candy! Yay!

Words Filip Knows

Keys, Bub, Mama, Dada, Ty, Dilly, Jae, Annie, Go Car, No, Trash, Nice, Choo choo, Moo, Bock bock bock, Umph, Voom, Meow, Leeza, Tickle, wah, Book, ball, Bible, Shoe, Done, Osh, Jesus, Squirrel, Block, Water, Money, I want, Pop, Mommom, Weeeee, Roar, Birdie....

He says all these semi-consistantly. He's getting so smart!

House Sitting

We're staying with Tyler, Dylan and Jae while Mom and Dad are in Cancun.

I did letter writing for 2 hours this morning. Now I can report 22 RV's. That will boost my numbers.

We went for a walk. Filip walked almost the entire horseshoe, because Tyler and Dylan were there rollerblading. If I go by myself with him, he wants me to carry him for about half the walk. After our walk we raked a pile of leaves for Filip to jump in. He liked it, but he liked raking better.

Tyler and Dylan found a bag of balloons, and blew a bunch of them up. So Filip is having fun, because there are balloons all over the living room.

I also baked cookies, did a little shopping, and went to the bank. Not a bad day.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain. I don't know what that means for our tract campaign. JR has to work all weekend. I might go home and clean.

Unlikely Match

Consider this quote from Bill Gates:

The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

I totally agree, except I would change "The world" to "I". These are great words for people doing nothing, and feeling sorry for themselves. Whether you agree with the above or not, I have noticed that people that suffer from low self-esteem have something in common with another type of person. That would be a person who suffers from too much self esteem.

I got to sit in on part of a Minority Access seminar a few weeks ago. This is an organization of mostly blacks who focus on getting minority children to have better access to higher education. One of the speakers, had spent most of her career traveling the world helping minorities with various goals. She was exceptional in her drive and pursuit of education and helping others. She was making some very good points about what needs young people have today.

One of the points she was making was that black kids tend to think they're 'all that', and waste their lives away in idleness and worthless pursuits. A problem facing the black community is this lack of desire in many young people to do anything productive. This is due to a feeling of entitlement to the things they want, but maybe not so much to the things they need.

So, white entrepreneurs are telling kids to do something worthwhile, if they want to feel good about themselves. At the same time, black teachers are telling kids to stop talking about themselves and how great they are, and go do something worthwhile.

Race really does not have a bearing on this issue. It just happens that the two poles of low self-esteem, and inflated self-esteem tend to gravitate to white kids, and black kids respectively. Larry Elder mentioned surveys that verify that black kids tend to score higher on self-esteem tests than white kids.

The point is this: Worthwhile action is what balances out self esteem. It's one solution to two different problems. This is what gives a human his value.

No Place Like Home

If you live in the United States, you need to read this. Very fascinating.

http://www.freedomclubusa.com/wizard_of_oz

Sick

I spent the whole morning sick in bed today. I've been sick a couple times since Filip was born. Each time, Filip just stays in bed with me all day. We watched a movie together, and then he played with his trucks and read his book while I slept.
You would think he would try to get off the bed, but he wants nothing but to be next to me all day. Besides, if I'm in bed, that means he gets unlimited nursing.

Since we had such an uneventful day, we went to the mall that evening. He played in the kiddie area for a long time.

Paper Issues

I have been receiving in the mail alot of pieces of paper that have detachable parts. I'm supposed to write the name of the piece of paper, as well as a number on a smaller piece of paper. Then, I'm supposed tear off the detachable piece of paper and stick it in an envelope with my smaller piece of paper and mail it back to where the original piece of paper came from.

Once a month, the bank sends me a piece of paper that contains all the numbers I wrote on smaller pieces of paper the month prior, as well as a big number that shows me what numbers I'm allowed to write on my small pieces of paper.

I've been really stressed out lately, because I keep getting these pieces of paper with the detachable parts in the mail that want me to write a certain number on my small piece of paper. The problem is, the piece of paper from the bank will not allow me to write those numbers on my small piece of paper.

Sometimes I write a different number on the small piece of paper and send that in with the detached piece of paper. Then, I get in the mail a piece of paper that asks me for another small piece of paper with numbers written on it.

Other times, the bank will not allow me to write any numbers at all on my small piece of paper. So, I don't send the detached piece of paper back. When that happens, I get another piece of paper in the mail that tells me that I forgot to mail in the last small piece of paper and they're willing to work with me to send them another small piece of paper.

In order to remedy this situation, I have been working in exchange for small pieces of paper with numbers on it. I mail these small pieces of paper in to the bank with another piece of paper that tells them to make sure I get these numbers on my piece of paper the bank sends me once a month.

The result is that sometimes I get the numbers that I need on my piece of paper from the bank to be able to write the correct numbers on my small piece of papers to send back with the detached pieces of paper where they came from.

However, I have had so many detached pieces of paper mailed to me, that I could not keep up. So, I went to another bank to see if they can help me with this. This bank said that if I provide them with all the pieces of paper that the other bank has sent me once a month for the past two years, as well as all the pieces of papers with detached parts that I can't send a small piece of paper with numbers on it, they may be able to help me.

So I gathered all my pieces of paper, and this new bank said that they will send with each one of these detached pieces of paper their own small piece of paper with numbers on it. This will stop all these detached pieces of paper coming to me in the mail. The bank is going to send me their own piece of paper with a detachable part to me every month. So now, I only have one small piece of paper every month that I am supposed to write and include with a detachable piece of paper.

If I do not miss sending my small piece of paper in every month I get rewarded with a number that tells me if I can go to the bank and have them write small pieces of paper in with detachable parts for me, in exchange for the bank sending me their own piece of paper with a detachable part.

If I stop sending small pieces of paper to the bank, I will get a whole lot of mail telling me to send that piece of paper with numbers written on it. If I let it go too long, the mail will be over-whelming. It will force me to go to a government building and ask for a whole lot of pieces of paper that I have to fill out that say I might not have to send them more small pieces of paper, as long as I promise to send small pieces of paper to certain pieces of paper with detachable parts. If I do this, my reward number will say that no bank will ever write any small pieces of paper for me for the next 7 years.

So my best option is to continue working for small pieces of paper, and maybe one day I'll get a small piece of paper that has a really big number written on it that I can send to my bank and write a whole bunch of small pieces of paper to each piece of paper I get in the mail.

Then, everything will be great!

Vaccination vs. Non-Vaccination

I found this link on another blog. It's a relatively small study (only 635 kids) comparing the overall health of vaccinated kids vs kids who didn't get shots. It's important to note that the vaccinated kids were less likely to get the diseases that they were inoculated against. That shows the effectiveness of the vaccine for that disease. I liked this study, because it wasn't just about autism and 'scary' things that kids die of. It was about the child's overall health.

http://www.vaccination.inoz.com/Vacc%20vs%20unvacc%20results%20survey.pdf

Fil-Qwon's Dance Moves

Are you ready to get down?