I’ve had a few things on my mind lately that I MUST SHARE WITH ALL OF YOU! Things I’ve referenced but not fully explained, and things I think you will love as much as I do.

First of all, The Fitbit (held in the picture to show how tiny it is!). My Mom got Casey and I one of these supped up pedometers for Christmas, and we LOVE it. This lovely little device captures the number of steps you take in a day, flights of stairs you’ve walked, calories burned, activity level – and it randomly sends you inspirational phrases like “I LUV YA!” and “STEPGEEK!” and “CLIMB!”
It connects wirelessly to your computer to update your stats throughout the day, and comes with a charger that is a USB device.

You can enter your daily gym activity, and your daily food intake as well. If you choose to set a weight loss goal, it will give you suggested meal and exercise plans. It tracks it ALL! 

You also wear this device while you’re sleeping and it tracks your sleep!

You can see that last night I had a 95% efficient sleep, but I was “awakened” 19 times. I think this is mostly when I roll over or move. Basically I got a ton of sleep last night, and it was much needed! I highly recommend this fantastic device to anyone looking to increase their health and pay more attention to the activity they get throughout a day.

And last, but DEFINITELY not least, I have finished reading an amazing book my one of my first bloggy friends, Kenya. She, much like myself, enjoys quotes from kids. Except she actually took it a step further and published a book chock full of adorable quotes by her very own son! I think this is amazing because he will never be this small again, and here she has a very wonderful snapshot of his wit and wisdom at this age.

Here is a perfect example…

I highly recommend picking up a copy of The Christopher Chronicles: Dead Chicken Soup for the Soul, as soon as possible – because you will LOVE it, and you will be laughing the entire time.  Plus, isn’t it great to support fellow bloggers in their adventures? I think so, and trust me, Kenya is a wonderful person to support!

Okay that’s it for now! I hope you all will go explore some of these neat things! Also, I have not been compensated or asked to review any of these items; they are just some amazing things that I wanted to let you know about!

Also linking up this post with GBE (Group Blogging Experience) for their prompt of “Reviews!” Go here to learn more about GBE, and join us!

Happy Sunday, everyone! Welcome back to another glimpse into my random brain.

Remember how I  got an iPod touch and promised more pictures from our week? OH YEAH. I love this thing. Here are the ones randomly chosen to fit in with my stream of consciousness this week.

 My Mom also got an iPod touch, and we figured out Facetime!! Wee!! Now we can chat anytime. And I also figured out how to take screen shots. I am unstoppable!

 I am the crazy girl taking pictures at the gym. Of myself. But only because I am wearing a most awesome Mighty Mouse shirt that says “Welcome to the Gun Show.” Welcome, indeed! Speaking of the gym, I had someone comment that they wished they as much free time as me to go to the gym. I love them dearly, but I almost took offense to this, as I don’t have loads of free time. But I do make the gym a priority. Read more on this at Susan’s page, I totally agree with her.

Here is our dog Barney. He’s under-represented on the blog and in pictures, because he does not often stop moving long enough to get a cute picture of him. But I snapped this one this week, and I thought it captured his adorable-ness. He’s more adorable when he’s not pacing the living room in the middle of the night and barking. That kind of behavior lands him in doggy jail.

Here is Skeeter demonstrating what doggy jail is. After going into the bathroom and tearing up an entire roll of toilet paper. Yup, they are the same as toddlers. Except I can lock them up in their bed as a punishment, which is frowned upon with “real” children.

Okay, time’s up! Enough random rambles from me today. The goal for today is to walk 20,000 steps on the Fitbit and to reach 150 stairs. Tune back in next week to see if I was successful 🙂

Oh, and I haven’t plugged this in awhile, but if you would come “like” our Facebook page, I’d be forever grateful. It’s lonely.

Have a great day, everyone!

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
Link up your post below.
Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

 This Saturday, I’ve decided to compile a list of reasons why I sometimes fill the stereotypical “woman” role in our relationship.

-I remember the important dates. Well, so does Jenn, but I’ll add that I remember ALL the dates. In addition to the “normal” stuff (first date, first kiss, wedding anniversary, etc.), I know that we first went camping on 6/20/08. I know that our first concert (my first one ever) was on 6/17/10. She gave me a homemade photo montage for the first time on 9/5/08. And the list goes on.

-Jenn mentioned once before how she didn’t cry during Nights in Rodanthe, but I did. I cry at many “chick flicks.” Earlier this week I cried through Disney/Pixar’s Up. Like all of it. She cried at the beginning, but didn’t succumb to all of the emotional twists and turns that movie had.

-I get worried about characters in fictional shows. Like we were watching “Jem” season 1 on DVD and I got worried about a little orphan girl who was going to go blind unless Jem and the Holograms could raise enough money for her operation by doing a movie with the Misfits. It’s emotional stuff!

-Well, you heard about Stacey and Jenn installing the door on her “Stream Of Consciousness” post last Sunday. I was in the basement organizing/logging comic books.

-I also had a lot of trouble breaking down the old door frame to take to the dump. I cringed and screamed like a little girl while we ripped apart the frame. I didn’t want a nail or a piece of wood to go flying and hit one of us.

-A few weeks ago, we borrowed my Dad’s truck to haul a lot of big items to the dump and the storage unit.  I’m a fairly nervous driver, and don’t like sitting up high in a vehicle, so Jenn offered to drive.  And she drove it the entire day.

-On our second date, Jenn discovered my set of “Powerpuff Girls” DVDs. It’s a good show!! I have recently sold them on account that I haven’t watched them since I was a big fat loser bachelor, so I suppose I have redeemed myself.

-My nails get really long. That’s due to my forgetfulness, though, not some need to grow them long or paint them or anything like that.

-I apparently look like my Mom. To the point that people at work saw an old photo hanging in my cubicle of my Mom holding me as a baby, and asked whose baby I was holding. Sometimes when I need a haircut Jenn says I start to look like her.

So that’s the list! I hope you found it entertaining! I also want to thank everyone who participated in last week’s competition moral research. It looks like “Team Casey” won out, meaning that most of you feel that this is a reasonable service and not a form of indentured servitude. I actually went to get a gallon of milk this week and listened to my Inner Jenn and walked inside the store to get it. I also didn’t want to pay an extra $5 service fee for the gallon of milk (which was totally the motivating factor).

Have a great week, everyone!

Thanks to everyone that entered!

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Welcome to another exciting edition of Kid Quotes! I am adding a link up today. I am hoping at least one person joins it, and that maybe if you love the kid quotes – you’ll add your own or pass it on! For anyone new here, I am a social worker and I collect the random things kids say to me during the week and share them here – because they are hilaarriiioousss!! Please give ME a round of applause, because I also created a BUTTON! Please link up by grabbing to code for the button and then entering your blog post in the Link up at the bottom!

And on to the kid quotes…

It’s hard to put yourself out there. To talk about the hard things. To acknowledge that you struggle.  But every time that I do, I am taken aback. By the support. The love. The virtual nods of sympathy and looks of understanding. The comments. The e-mails. The phone calls. The cards.

A remarkable amount of people have reached out to me. Sharing their own stories. Of miscarriage. Of infertility. Of young stroke survivors. Of kidney disease. Of their own times surviving on ramen noodles and dreams. 

It is almost like she is a little girl again, and I am her little brown bear that she takes everywhere.

It is familiar – the way her chocolate brown curls are covering my body, as she squeezes me so tight.

Tonight, tears are falling from her cheeks at an alarming rate and absorbing into my brown fur.

I don’t make a sound, but I wish with every ounce of my stuffing that I could take her pain away.  

I wonder, briefly, how  many tears have fallen onto me over the years.

She murmurs into my body. I can’t understand fully what she is saying.

I have spent most of my days lately tucked away on a shelf.

I see the sun rise and the sun set.

I watch her laugh as she spends time with friends.

I watch her schedule herself to be too many places at once, and then wonder how she is going to get it all done.

She is a beautiful young woman.

She has outgrown me.

Most days, anyways.

But today, she needs me. And I am there. As I have always been.

I absorb her tears until she cannot cry anymore, until she rests on my body.

Her head fits snugly into a mold she has created from many years using me as a pillow.

“Oh Snuggles,” she sighs.

She fingers the familiar remnants of a hole in my neck – a scar from a run-in with an overzealous dog. I remember how kindly her Grandmother had sewed it for me. She was a gentle woman.

“You always smell the same,” she says as she breathes in deeply.

I want to tell her that she does too. That I miss the days of her and I.

Even the days that she forced me to put on a bonnet and a diaper and lay in her play crib while she force fed me bottles.

She props me up, and stares into my dark eyes. Her eyes are red and puffy, her hair is a mess. She is exhausted.

She hugs me tight again, and begins to fall asleep.

Tomorrow, I will end up on the shelf again.

She will be smiling again.

But tonight? Tonight it’s me and her.

Together.

Tonight, I will make her feel safe.

Just like I’ve been doing since she was just a little girl, with her little brown bear.

Do you remember those commercials? This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. And the egg frying in the pan? I did not understand these commercials as a kid, but I used to love saying that phrase at random times throughout my early “tween” years. Anyway, I think of this because South Carolina had their primary election – and NEWT GINGRICH won it. So, obviously South Carolina is the egg in the frying pan. Just saying.

In other news, my best friend and I INSTALLED A DOOR YESTERDAY. By ourselves. We felt bad ass, and pretty awesome. We took down my bathroom door and put in the new one. Crowbars, rusty boxcutter, ghetto hammer and all.

 Crow bar!! I took out the inside frame, she took out the outside frame. And then we high-fived. We are still girls – despite our manly tendencies.

The new door! Believe me, it’s beautiful and far more exciting because we did it ourselves!

Let’s see, I learned a lesson about race from an eight year old I work with. Yup. He separated all of my dolls that live in the doll house in my office into three categories- White, Black, Asian. Then he proceeded to bring all the “Asian” dolls to my desk and told me they were living in Asia, stealing our jobs because they are smarter than us. The Black dolls went all together into a small plastic tub because “they are poor, and used to be slaves” and the White dolls went into the house and were lined up watching TV. All 10 of them. Glad to see racial politics are alive and well in Maine (sarcasm intended).

We launched our first Giveaway this week, and I really hope you’ll go enter it and give these people some competition. I promise, it’s an awesome scrapbook software and you will love it. Go enter! And let any of your scrapbooking/crafty friends know about it!

That’s it for me. I’m off to work on Monday’s blog post about how to diagnose a Blogger. Stay tuned!

Happy Sunday!

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post below.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.