Mompreneurism Has Taken Over My Life!

This week has been hectic, long and it’s not even over yet! Today’s Mompreneur seems to have taken over my mornings and my thoughts when I am trying to sleep at night. I keep coming up with new ideas I would like to try, and even had a dream about a post I wanted to write!

However, that is just one example of why I am so addicted to Netflix. Who can resist becoming absorbed into a movie? Just yesterday I was finally able to watch Alvin and the Chipmunks. I also watched more Alf.

I’ve honestly enjoyed stepping away and watching a movie when possible. I feel like my work has improved because of it. Although it gives me less time… the time I have is being put to better use. I don’t feel so sick of everything I need to do, I am shaking things up a bit.

I am a little worried about how I am going to make everything work having added Today’s Mompreneur to my workload. I am hoping it’ll run smoothly, but we’ll have to wait and see.

This weekend I am hoping to relieve some of my worries with 3 new movies to watch. One of them includes Tyler Perry as Madea, and that’s always a good laugh when needed.

Photo Credit: kimberlyfaye

Posted in Personal Posts, Today's Mompreneur, Work

Not Just Another Mompreneur?

Normally I would have posted over the weekend, but life caught up with me and I couldn’t find the time. I haven’t even been able to get everything written for Ask Angel this week! Long story short, this is going to be a long week as I try to fit in everything I need to do into each day.

However, I did take a chance to become a Today.com blogger and now have a new blog, the one pictured above in fact. I like to call it Today’s Mompreneur.

I am not the average woman, nor am I the average mompreneur. Technically I am just a freelance writer, but I am a mom and writing has become my business, of sorts, so I think I fit! More than anything, I think all women who are self-employed should be allowed to fit under the title. From business owners, to the direct sales reps, we’re all mompreneurs in one way or another and it deserves to be recognized!

I gave it a lot of thought, and I think I’ve gotten a list down to how I want Today’s Mompreneur to run. I have lists of topics I’d like to cover, and I’ve given each one a day. For instance, I wrote about entertaining children with crayons and a coloring book as today’s post. That fits under “something related to children for mompreneurs”. In this case, a tidbit of advice for entertainment. However, I might make Tuesday dedicated to a new ‘entertainment’ tip each week. I would like to use Wednesday to spotlight an individual mompreneur. That could be an interview or business spotlight. I would also like to mention popular mompretunities. Mom Business Opportunities. The list goes on and will become better defined as I get into the groove of things. The best part? We’ll be updated 7 days a week.

My ultimate goal for this new blog is this:

I would like to motivate, inspire and share the stories of women who want to work for themselves.

I just hope I can do it.

Posted in Other Blogs, Today's Mompreneur

If My Brain Was A Computer, What Would I Do?

Some days I think my brain deserves an upgrade. Much like a computer that, although 2001 wasn’t all that long ago, it is now considered in need of replacement.

So my brain is running, and the available RAM is dwindling. Suddenly it is overloaded with open tasks and freezes up. I find myself sitting here, staring at my own computer screen waiting for it to decide whether it’ll shut down or simply crash completely.

Reboot is administered.

Upon reloading, I must decide which programs are necessary to keep going and which items can safely shut down until a later time.

I have my work program. If I turn that off, I will not be able to accomplish 80% of the things I need to fill before the day is through. That is a must have and will not be closed down.

How about that muse icon which runs in the task bar? It always seems to be on when I’m not using it, yet I can’t find the program in my start menu when I actually have to load it.

Running in the background, almost unnoticed, would be Procrastination. A useless program, really. Maybe I’ll uninstall it later.

Thankfully I have Jarte to write down ideas I have, as they happen. If it wasn’t for the autosave feature, I’d probably lose them after each blue screen of death and restart that my system is forced into. There is no way I can close out this word program.

After long deliberation, and many ctrl+alt+del* moments, I’ve decided to shut down the whole system and go watch Alf instead. Nothing is more brain-numbing than TV!

* To give credit where it is due, Amy Derby is the one who first mentioned rebooting a bad day. So thank you Amy for being my muse for this post.

Posted in Personal Posts, Random Thoughts

No Good Day Ends Without An Injury, Or Two

My super-duper, stuffed full of pumpkin filling goodness, melts in your mouth and not in your hands, pumpkin pie. It tasted delicious. Mom ate a huge bit of it. I ate a huge bit of it. Aubree did too. If you notice, this is just one pie. I cooked two today.

Although the edges of the pie kind of look a bit burned, it’s actually not. I thought it was too but it kind of caramelized on the edges of the crust, it tastes darn good. Most of all, I can hardly wait to have another big ol’ slice tomorrow! Damn I love Pumpkin pie. However, I do love Sweet Potato pie more, but I don’t think anyone sells that filling in a can. :-/

Pie making isn’t all that made this day great. You see, I took today off for a series of mommy/daughter time with Monkey. Okay, a big part of it was for my sanity as well. I get really grumpy when I get over worked, so I took some time to relieve some of that work stress by having fun! Most of it was fun for Monkey, though. She ate pie, we watched disk two from season one of Alf, then we carved her pumpkin for her. We lit a pumpkin candle and put it in there so she could watch it as it lit up. Nothing was more exciting for her today, I would think. She’s really getting into this stuff now that she’s almost 4 years old and it’s great to see her enjoy it so much. Heck, it’s about time Halloween started to come back around because she has been asking me to take her trick-or-treating since last Halloween!!

Then, of course, the title here. It’s true, pie baking burned my arm and I cut myself with the knife while working on the pumpkin. It’s nice to have a way to remember a great moment… but I do not recommend injury. I just a bit unlucky when it comes to that stuff. I can’t bake without burning myself, so that was a given. Didn’t expect to cut my hand, though. Kids… this is why you need to make sure the knife always points at the PUMPKIN.

Most of all, I am going to go now. I have a few more minutes before I can go to bed but I am just thankful I was able to get a moment to write in here. Nothing like a blog post to round off a great day like today.

Posted in Parenthood, Personal Posts, Pictures

The Good Ol’ Classics… Are The 80’s Classic Yet?

A few nudges had me considering a Netflix account. It was Amy Derby that pushed me over the edge by dangling the hope of Alf in front of me.

With my two week free trial I have added all 3 seasons of Alf to my queue. Unfortunately, although I signed up for three at a time, I’m only getting one. So I received Alf Season 1, Disk 1 (out of 4) today. I watched it. My need for Alf has only just started to be quenched. Only a total of 11 left to go! I think it’ll take me a while…

However, it was wonderful getting to watch those first 7 episodes of Alf. It started in 1986, the year after I was born, so I don’t remember them beyond any reruns I might have seen when I was a little older. The instant I saw the beginning to an episode, it definitely triggered some fond Alf “I remember that…” moments.

Putting Alf on my list has Netflix recommending to me a whole bunch of old 80’s shows that have moved to DVD, some of which I’ve never heard of.

Do you have a your own favorite 80’s series? What is the name of it? Why do you like it? I might end up renting the series, if it’s available, based on your recommendation.

Posted in Personal Posts, Topic-Specific

When Politics Take Over Your School

When Monkey started school, I knew I wanted to be involved. My parents were involved in the things I did, and that was cool. I just knew that it was something I wanted to do. Especially since she is my only child and I have the flexibility of working from home, something my mom did not have.

However, I did not expect ‘getting involved’ to include running for a position within the parent involvement meetings. And winning.

It definitely made of an interesting day coming off the fact we’d just found out that Monkey also needs glasses.

I will be representing all the other parents of the school Monkey is in on different policies that they’d like to see implemented. It’ll be fun to get involved. There is even free dinner for all of us, that’s fun too.

In light of the political season, I find it interesting that I won an office somewhere. Maybe I will become the next PTA mom turned Vice President Hopeful?

Naw…

Posted in Parenthood, Personal Posts, Topic-Specific

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

After getting sick a few weeks ago I had just started to get everything back on track that had once been derailed. Then I got hit with a whopper of a cold. Derailed all over again.

So here I am, lagging behind on posts again and feeling much too groggy for anything to get accomplished.

I am in desperate need of a good, long, stress free week. One that includes a lot of sleeping. I would also enjoy some ‘for fun’ tasks. Writing for fun. Reading for fun. Knitting for fun. It has been a while since I’ve known what a hobby felt like.

Instead I can’t afford a vacation. No fun for me.

So instead I’ve been grabbing breaks when I can get them at the price of not being able to post.

I had some good topics I wanted to blog about too. They will have to wait until the weekend.

Until then, chew on this thought:

You might be a redneck if: you have to glue your rearview mirror back on your junky pickup truck.

That’s what I’ll be doing this weekend.

Posted in Personal Posts, Random Thoughts

When The World Crumbles, Rebuild

What can I say, some moments are good and some are bad. It’s a big part of life. Right now I seem to be somewhere in the middle.

Like any normal human, some moments are bad. I get stressed out much too easily, my eyes hurt from straining too much and can’t forget that neck kink that won’t go away.

Then the upside comes around and the world is good again. Looking at bringing in new potential clients interested in a press release, applying for a potential blogging position, and I finally accomplished my goal of writing my first article to submit to AmChron.

The problem is, no matter how positive things get it only takes one little negative to reduce it all to ashes.

I noticed I’ve been focusing a lot on the negative lately. A little too tired, feeling a little over worked, and all around grumpy. Yet I haven’t felt much like talking about the good things going on, so I will do that today. I will rebuild my crumbling world, one positive at a time.

Lets start with that article. I was working on something completely different when the idea hit me. No, I will not be sharing my inspiration yet, but when it hit I decided it would be a good time to drop everything and start writing it out. I did so, and almost 700 words later I am happy to say I just need to do one more review before I submit it for consideration. Hopefully it goes over well, won’t need much editing, and gets posted as quickly as possible. I look forward to showing the world what I can do.

Then something amazing happened, Write To Press went up in page rank for Google. It was a 0, now it is sitting happily at a 2. That is a pretty big surprise. I didn’t imagine I’d go up in PR since I don’t really promote myself. I just network and gain clients that way.

I am relearning how much I enjoy my craft again as I break way from stressing about the time to work ratio. Especially as things get better at Ask Angel. I’ve gained new readers as I’ve switched up how I post on there. I’ve been receiving comments and messages from people who like the new style, and it’s the best thing to have ever happened to my website.

So things are much better than I can make them seem at times. It just means looking past the stuff that stresses me out and thinking positive.

Posted in Personal Posts, Random Thoughts

The Tortoise And The HAIR

An interview I still need to put together recently reminded me of a hairy experience I had some time back. Thought I’d share the thought.

I had walked into some hair styling franchise whose name I will not repeat and asked about getting a cut and dye. I think I just wanted streaks in my hair at the time. They told me that it’d be impossible and to make an appointment, so I made the appointment and went on my way. It was when I came back for my appointment that I found out how stupid they really are.

I let them know I was there, and the lady informs me, “Oh, but we can’t dye your hair! Our person who does that is not in.” Oh great, so the appointment I made was for nothing because that is the main reason why I made it and why they told me I had to make an appointment. I told her as much and she explained there was nothing she could do about it; would I like to make an appointment for another day?

Heck no!

I told the woman where to shove her frickin’ appointment book and walked out. One of those temper flair-ups because I am sick and tired of being jerked around by an airheaded brunette. I am a brunette with much more going for me than that woman had.

That same day I walked into another business, this time a mom-and-pop style business and they not only got me in at that moment but did everything as I needed.

The best part of this adventure is this: The small beauty shop is still alive and well. That big ol’ franchise which couldn’t organize their stuff? They’re gone like the wind.

Much like the title of this post, and like the story of the tortoise and a hare, the little guy keeps going because they are nice and they serve their customers with care. That darn hare of a franchise crashed because they couldn’t be bothered with how their potential customers felt.

Of course not all franchises are bad, it is how they are handled. This big box was not handled well.

Posted in Personal Posts, Random Thoughts