Dreaming of summer while wearing Crocs winter boots

Want to know a little trick I use to bring a touch of summer back into dreary winter days?

Every once in a while, when I can't take any more of the sky and land blending into one greyish hue, I apply sunscreen instead of my normal moisturizer.  It warms my soul to smell like beach all day and reminds me that there is (sun) light at the end of that dark tunnel also known as a NH winter.

My daughter is an Aruba baby and has a really hard time with winter.  Like mother like daughter, right?  She's a fourth grader.  Read: way too cool to play in the snow at school.  No snow pants for her - well, until I can get Katy Perry to design a sparkly pair that she is willing to pimp, thereby proving that cool girls can indeed be warm.

Bygones.

Totally lost the snow pant battle this year, but I still make her wear snow boots to and from school.  It's been far less of a struggle now that she has a pink pair of Crocs.

No, not the summer sandals.

Snow boots.

Looky here.

These are Crocs Chameleons™ Crocband™ Gust Boot.

Aren't they cool?

First of all, they are pink.  And girlie.

But even better?  The band changes color when the temp goes below 50 degrees.

Funny, she doesn't complain when I make her wear these.  Says they are super comfy.  Her words.

Crocs offers a variety of winter snow boots to suit your kids' style needs.  My son wants to try the glow in the dark ones.  Although I'm not sure I get the whole glow in the dark thing with snow boots.  Who wants to be outside in the winter when it's dark anyway?

 You can purchase Crocs winter boots via their website OR by using their handy, dandy store locator to find a store near you.  Prices range from $19.99 - $49.99 ish.

Disclosure:

I was offered free product in exchange for sharing information with my readers.  Thoughts are my own.

Why is it so easy to be passive aggressive with your spouse?

Looking for an anwer? 

Yeah.  Take a number.  I am as well.

I woke up to not one, but TWO kids with a golden Stay Home from School Sick Ticket yesterday.  Now, I know I work from home so that I can handle these unexpected times more easily than if I worked for someone else.  It's supposedly a perk of me having an in-home office.

heh

But it's getting to the point where I cannot drop everything work related just because I have sick kids at home.  Reality set in really, really quickly after I made the sick call to the school and looked down at my planner.  My schedule was packed and a lot of juggling would need to occur for me to pull it all off.

It's never a good thing to start off a day with that dreadful feeling of complete overwhelmedness.

Is too a word.

So, I fed the kids breakfast and found this in the sink.

Gross, right?

Something you need to know: It's a pet peeve of mine to leave gross, rotting food in the dish drain - especially letting it sit there overnight.

gag

My husband of almost 11 years knows this.  He was up and out of the house hours earlier that morning and totally saw it before leaving.  I mean, he had to have seen it, right?  He was the one who left it.

I gritted my teeth, grabbed a paper towel and dumped the damn drain.

Breakfast was served by an irritated server with a side of coughing kids and lots of snot.  Yum.

Went upstairs to get on my computer and saw this on the futon in my office.

I know how this is going to sound when I say this, but leaving clean laundry in piles around the house?  One of my only other pet peeves.  No, really.  I'm not a hugely anal person, but seeing this set me off. 

My husband knows this irritates me - yet he did it anyway AND left it right in my office.  It's like he was rubbing my nose it in.

So, I did what any reasonable woman would do.  I started plotting the ways I could seek my revenge.  No big statements.  Just a few passive aggressive ways to get back at him.

Like this one time when we were newly dating, he was being a total grouch when I was trying to help him clean his desk.  He was in grad school at the time.  His room resembled ground zero and his desk was where the bomb had detonated.  No idea how he accomplished any work.

Anyhow.

One of my tasks was to sort through the 100ish pens and pencils.  He said something snippy to me.  I bit my tongue, giggled to myself and started putting black pen caps on the blue pens and vica versa.  I knew it would drive him batty... and it felt good.  Really good.

Looking back, I have to ask myself why.  Why did it feel so good to irritate him?  Did it make him any less grumpy?  Hell no.  Totally didn't help the situation.  Although I must tell you, to this day he shakes his head and smiles whever he pulls out one of those pens with the mismatched covers.  It may not have been nice, but it was memorable.

So, yesterday, I sat in my office and took a few deep breaths while attempting to regain perspective.

My husband left the gross mess in the dish drain after he washed the dishes.  I doubt he left it there to purposefully create more work for me, nor to irritate me.  He could have walked away and left the dirty dishes for me to deal with, right?

But he didn't, because he is a good husband.  He just lacks follow through sometimes...ehem.

And the laundry?

He left the laundry in a pile in my office because he switched loads in the middle of the night after discovering our son left a mess in his school backpack.  Instead of leaving it for me to deal with in the morning rush, he dealt with it in the middle of the night.

He did this, not to irritate me, but because he is a good husband.

Crap.  Perspective can suck sometimes.

Even though, for reasons I cannot explain, it would have felt good to plot against him, I knew I had a choice.  I could spend more time and energy fueling passive aggressive ideas on how to get back at him or I could acknowledge what he did do... and let it go.

Which would you choose?

@eBay's new site puts Green on steroids, plus enter to win $1,000 gc #spon

Last week, members of eBay's Parent Panel were granted a sneak peak into the new eBay Green site.  Let me tell you, it's way cool.

Whether you want to buy green, sell green or participate in an active green community, this site has it all.  I mean, if you think about it, eBay is inherently green to begin with.  They've pretty much mastered Reuse, don't you think? 

OK back to the site.  There's so much coolness, I cannot cover it all in one blog post.  It's like they took green and put it on steroids.  I'm just going to share with you my top 3 favorite features and you're going to have to go explore yourself to find the rest.

My faves:

Click to read more ...

Help find 4-year-old Kyle a part Asian, part Caucasian bone marrow donor

Back in 2007, I read a story online about a women in need of a bone marrow transplant in order to save her life.  She was around my age.  Her big, bright blue eyes made her face shine, despite the obvious toll cancer treatments were having on her body.  As I stared at her picture, it felt as my own eyes were reflecting back at me.  I felt compelled to act.

That day, I signed up for the National Marrow Donor Registry.  The first step was as easy as swiping a cotton swab across my cheeks.  Within weeks, I found out I was a match for a 21 year old stranger with leukemia.  Unfortunately, I didn't start blogging until 2 months after going through the donation process, but I did write about it a few times after the fact. 

My peripheral stem cells were able to extend her life by 9 months.  I struggled with the fact that she didn't survive for quite a while.  Now that I have lost people close to me, I realize just how much of a gift 9 months really is.  Heck, I would take just one more day with any of them.

Unfortunately, the woman whose story inspired me to join the registry was not so fortunate.  A match was never found.  Here's a sad statistic from the NMDP: around 10,000 patients currently are in need of a marrow transplant, yet only half will recieve one.

Heartbreaking, isn't it?

If you are not already on the National Marrow Donor Registry, please consider signing up.  You could be a match for someone in dire need.  I would be more than happy to hold your hand through the process and talk to you about any reservations you may have about the actual donation, if you are ever deemed a match.

If you know of anyone part Asian, part Caucasian who is not already on the registry, please share this story with them.

source:kyleneedsyou.org

Meet Kyle.

This handsome 4 year old has aplastic anemia and needs your help.  It's hard enough to find an exact match for bone marrow, but when you are biracial, it's even more difficult.

Out of the 9 million registered bone marrow donors, not one has been a match.  Yet.  I believe in my heart that his match is out there.  We just need to find him/her before it is too late.

Kyle's family has set up a website called Kyle Needs You.  There you find information about Kyle as well as how to help.  There are links you can share via your social media networks.  If you are reading this blog post, I'm assuming you probably at least have a Facebook profile, right?

Please help spread the word about Kyle.  Even if you don't turn out to be a match for him, you could end up helping someone else.

Live Talk with Asha Dornfest of ParentHacks on TheMotherhood today at 1pm ET

Have you seen TheMotherhood's new website design?  I absolutely love, Love, LOVE it.  You must check it out.

Front and center on the site are their live talks.  As a contractor, I produce all of TheMotherhood's talks that involve a live video component.  I cannot begin to tell you how very excited I am for them to roll out their editorial calendar over the next few months.  They have some GREAT topics with some of my favorite bloggers.

Yes, I love this part of my job.

Coming up later today is a talk with Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks.  There will be a brief, live video intro (produced by moi) followed by Asha jumping into the chat page to share "tips and tricks for organizing your home with a minimum of fuss, time and stress." 

I don't know about you, but I certainly need help in that department.  My For the Home board on Pinterest has been rapidly filling up with organizational ideas that I may or may not ever implement.

Here are the details:

What: The Best Ideas for Getting Organized With Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks

Where: Live on TheMotherhood (follow the link)

When: Monday, January 23, 2012 at 1pm EST