myJaxonIf we don’t go crazy once in a while, we’ll all go crazy. - Hawkeye

I find mySpace to be amusing and not to annoying. Either way (for some reason, I felt the need to start the sentence like this), I’m not one who does the whole forward things and whatnot. However, this one, I saw some purpose in. I could do this and it doesn’t require to much out of me and it actually would make someone else happy.

James is a little boy who has been diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) and he wants to have 1,000,000 friends on mySpace. That’s his wish. He’s going through the rigors of dealing with Leukemia and when most children wish of meeting famous people or going someplace exotic or cool, his wish is to have 1,000,000 friends. It’s simple and easy to fulfill. Granted, there isn’t a charity out there that can help him with this, so that is where we come in. If you have a mySpace page, request to be his friend. It doesn’t require much effort from you, but it would mean the world to him if he gets his wish.

His web address is http://www.myspace.com/bizwiz68
His display name is “James and Daddy”

Do it, don’t do it, it may not matter to you, but it does to him. He wants to be your friend, if only so he can say he has a million friends. Who knows what his future holds for him and if this brings him some peace and happiness during some hard times, then it’s worth it in the end. Even if you don’t have a mySpace page, tell your friends anyway. They may have one or they may have friends who have one. The more people that find out about this, the better the chance James has of fulfilling his wish.

I have to make some decisions. I really can’t put them off any longer. One of them is something I’ve been attempting to do for years with no real success and that needs to change. The other was going to happen eventually, it’s just occurring sooner than I had planned. Regardless of how these came about, I need to stick by the decisions I’m going to make and that’s going to be really hard.

I need to lose weight. It’s not an option any more. I’m tired of being big and clunky. I’m ready to go shopping and be able to put something on and not think “not in this lifetime”. I’ve made some half-assed attempts in the past, but I really need to do it this time. I want to be where I was going into college. That means I have to lose close to 50lbs and that is not going to be easy. I’ve wanted to try Weight Watchers, and if it was cheaper or we had the money, I would be signing up tonight. Unfortunately, that isn’t an option right now, but I’m hoping to try it sometime this fall. For now, I’ll start with the basics. No more pasta. No more pop. No more sweets (except ice cream). It’s going to be hard. Especially the pasta. It’s an easy and easy meal and we always have it in the apartment. That’s going to change. Besides, pasta makes me tired anyway and it takes away any drive I have going that day. I’ve given up pop before and I can do it again. Sweets is going to be a little harder since Jesse has such a sweet tooth (especially at the moment). I’m not giving up ice cream because I’ll need something sweet and I can get that fat-free and it’ll still taste somewhat good. Plus, I love my Popsicles, as does Ian. Exercising is going to be hard. I have a couple of the Billy Blanks Bootcamp DVDs here and I should do them, but I always feel like an idiot doing aerobics by myself. I would walk, but I’m not comfortable doing that around here. At least not by myself with Ian. We have the Clinton River Trail running behind the complex and there is another one going through the nature reserve we’re next to, but neither are in a well-lit area or a well-traveled area. It creeps me out too much. So this decision has been made….I’m going on a diet and I’m sticking with it. It’s going to take a lot of will power that I don’t have, but I’m hoping that everyone will be supportive and help me keep at it.

Most mothers who breastfeed generally go into their infant bites them. I always thought that meant with teeth, but I’m beginning to realize that isn’t true. Ian doesn’t have any teeth yet, but he has some tough gums. It’s a natural reaction considering he’s on solid foods now, but he’s starting to bite more and my supply is going down anyway. I think it’s time to end the nursing. I wasn’t ready to stop just yet, but I’ve talked with the Ped’s office and they said that most mothers go about 6 months. I was hoping to go closer to 8-9 months, but what can I do. Plus, I’m fertile again and neither of us are ready for another kid. I think we would both lose it if I ended up pregnant. We want time to enjoy watching Ian grow without having to worry about another kid. The only way to ensure we don’t get pregnant is for me to go back on the pill and I can’t do that while I’m nursing. This is a tough decision, but Jesse and I have been talking about it and I think we’re ready to wean Ian off of it. I think the biggest problem we’re going to have is his night awakenings. Truthfully, he should be sleeping through the night, but when I can’t get him to calm down at 3am, nursing helps. Also, whenever I’ve tried giving him a bottle during the day, he doesn’t like it. He wants mama instead. He doesn’t fight the bottle at night. He knows he gets that one, but the ones during the days are different. I think Jesse will agree with this, but we’ll go until our anniversary. Then Ian is getting off of the breast milk and will be sticking to the Gerber foods and formula.

I want to go back to work. Not full time or anything big, but just something that’ll get me out of the house for a couple of hours a week. I’m thinking of getting a job at a retail shop during the weekends for the holiday season. I love being home with Ian, but I want to get out (plus the additional money would be nice). The biggest obstacle to this is day care. We can’t afford it, so we’re going to have to get it so Jesse can take care of Ian for eight hours straight. It takes a lot of patience and realizing that what you want to do isn’t a priority when watching Ian; and Jesse hasn’t accepted that yet. He’s been able to watch Ian for short spans of time, but if watching him gets in the way of him doing something he wants, he starts to lose patience. He’s always had me to fall back on and he won’t if I’m at work. We’re going to try an experiment where Jesse gets Ian for eight hours and I’ll be in the office the entire time just in case. Hopefully Jesse will be able to do it, but I have my doubts (especially considering we’ll have to find time to do it and I know Jesse has things he wants to do). He may surprise me, but I know him. He hasn’t had to get Ian to take a nap or try to figure out what is wrong or any of the small things. There have been a couple of times where I was able to rock Ian to sleep, but it wasn’t a quick 2 minute job. It took a good 10 minutes or longer and it required a lot of patience. Either way, this is a decision I can’t make on my own and I’m not expecting it to go the way I want. We’ll see what happens though.

So I’ve been doing a little reorganizing of my websites. I’ve had content on the www.myjaxon.com website for awhile, but it became apparent that I stopped using it. For awhile, I had been using it as short of a blog and then I started my Wordpress one. Since then, the only times I’ve used it was for my cookbook and picture galleries. I’m not sure if anyone else uses anything on it, but I was ready for a change. Not only was I ready for a new look, but there are going to be a couple of new addresses as well. I’m still working on redesigning the new sites, but the content is still there.

If you haven’t noticed by now, the major change is to this website. And no I’m not talking about the new design. I’m referring to the web address. Since I’ve been using this site the most, it was time that it got top billing. So now, http://blog.myjaxon.com will now be redirected to http://www.myjaxon.com. Due to this change, we had to make a lot of changes to all of the external pages (i.e. my cookbook and scrapbooks), so here are those changes.

• My cookbook will now be located at http://cookbook.myjaxon.com. Hopefully this will make it easier to remember.
• Pictures will now be located at http://pictures.myjaxon.com. I did do a complete redesign on this. I actually like it a lot better, but it is still being worked on. I only have the last two years here so far, but I’m working on scanning in a bunch of pictures so everything needs to be re-examined. As I become happy with the older pictures, I’ll start adding them back onto the page. Until then, if you want a certain picture, let me know and I’ll send you a direct link. This will also mean that all the pictures in all of our blogs (Jesse’s, Ian’s, and mine) will probably end up broken. I’m going to try and make all the changes, but I may miss a few. If I do, just let me know and I’ll get that changed.
• All of my random stuff that I have is now located at http://stuff.myjaxon.com. This would include all the pages with my class notes, the IRC listing that I did for my father, and other various pages that I’ve made public. Not everything will be listed on this page (i.e. my address book), but it will still be at this address.

If I missed something, let me know, but I think that is all of the changes.

We did it again. Last year we went camping at Orchard Beach State Park in Manistee and this year we went back for another round. Brad and Erin were unable to join us this year, however, Tim and Kathie came up instead. The weekend wasn’t quite like last year, but when you mix up the crowd, that tends to happen. The weather was really great all weekend. Much better than last year. It rained on the four hour car ride to the west side of the state, but it didn’t rain again until we were taking the tents down this morning. And even then, it really didn’t rain, just hiccuped a little.

Saturday night we went to Little River Casino and I actually made money. Well, sorta. Jesse and I each took in $10 and that is what we used to gamble with. I ended up leaving with $32. That’s not bad. Jesse didn’t do so hot, but he made up for it Sunday when we went back and I ended up losing all $10 I went in with and he came out with $14. Yeah Jesse!

We didn’t check it out last year, but we did get down to the Port City Street Fair that goes on during this same weekend. There was a bunch of arts and craft tables, some live music, and a bunch of food. At one end of the street, there was a car show going on, but I think we got to it towards the end. Most of the cars were gone when we went to check them out.

We definitely learned from our mistakes last year. We didn’t do community snack foods and I don’t think we spent that much on food. Beth and Jordan brought a lot of food with them, so there really wasn’t much for us to go shopping for. We didn’t go through anywhere near the amount of wood we did last year. Granted, it was warmer this year (by a lot), so there really wasn’t the need for a continuous fire. Don’t get me wrong, we had one, it just wasn’t roaring.

We ended up getting a new tent this year. After last year’s fiasco with the rain and the leaky tent, Jesse and I ended up with a six-person Coleman tent. It was a really nice tent, but there was one thing we were sorely lacking….an air mattress. That’s next year’s purchase. We have a decent tent now, we just need to fix the sleeping arrangements.

I think that’s about it. Jesse and I have already decided that we need to take Ian camping next spring (no he didn’t go with us this weekend, he spent it with grandma). I’m trying to convince Jesse that we should go for the Lilac Festival in Mackinaw Island in June. We’ll see if I can. Oh yeah, the pictures for this weekend are here. So enjoy.

The first two chapters for “A Lick of Frost” have been posted on Laurell’s website. Check them out if you haven’t already. Here they are: Chapter 1 and Chapter 2