Not new, but I might as well be...
Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2021 9:21 pm
Hey everyone. Long time no see! The first thing I want to say is a huge huge huge thank you to all of the wonderful women who have taken over the admin reins and kept this forum up in the past few years! You have all done an absolutely amazing job, and I will never be able to thank you enough. Everything looks fantastic.
I absolutely hate that I haven't popped in almost at all in the last several years. For a while it was all of the drama of Nicole in middle school coupled with a total sh** show at work that was causing me to spend more time drinking than enjoying hobbies and other forms of self-care. Then she got to high school and we dove head first into the whole band booster scene. I was even on the board of the boosters for a while because we had some bully parents that were driving the program into the ground and running off any potential volunteer who didn't have a thick skin.
Obviously 2020 put a crashing halt to all of that momentum. We were even traveling with the Marching Band AT Disney World when the place closed down. Our kids marched down Main Street USA just hours before the parks closed for several months. We came back home to a county quarantine, and I haven't seen my office since. Fortunately I had brought my laptop home before vacation and had a spare docking station in my craft room, so I didn't have much need to return for anything. I still have personal effects there, which I'll need to go pack up eventually, because it's not likely that I'll still have a dedicated cubicle when the university starts letting IT back on campus. We've managed to accomplish more than they ever dreamed from home, and now they aren't super interested in keeping up the real estate to have us all back on site permanently. LOL.
I kind of thought that having a home office in my craft room would facilitate the return of inspiration, but it didn't. I'm on the crappiest run project of probably my entire IT career, and once I reached a stopping point for the day, the last thing I wanted to do was be sitting inches from my laptop. It was kind of a bummer. But we finally crossed a major milestone in December, and it looks like we might have a bit of breathing room again from now through about May. And with the kids school activities still severely pared down from prior years, I'd like to get back to filling my evenings and weekends with paper.
For anyone who is new in the last few years, HI! I'm Julie. I may have welcomed you to the forum via email if I enabled your registration. I'm one of the "originals" to this forum, all those years ago, but have suffered several bouts of "life got in the way". I've been married to Rob for 23 years, and I have a High School Senior (Nicole) and an 8th grader (Jake). Nicole is off to college next year, which was something I probably wasn't holding out hope for the last time I was hanging out here on the regular. But she turned her academic mess around, and has some pretty clear ideas about the direction she wants to go. Jake is a stinker, who is currently pulling the same "I don't have any homework" shenanigans that his sister pulled at that age, and we spent most nights reminding him that homework isn't optional just because it's boring. We're Disney people, and these past 9 months have been the first time in 12 years that we didn't have our next trip booked by the time the current trip ended.
Anyway, I'm ready to get crafting again. I have a crap ton of kits to put together and 4 years worth of pictures waiting to be printed and scrapped. It will take me a bit to get back into the habit of checking in, but I'm ready. Talk you you all again soon!
I absolutely hate that I haven't popped in almost at all in the last several years. For a while it was all of the drama of Nicole in middle school coupled with a total sh** show at work that was causing me to spend more time drinking than enjoying hobbies and other forms of self-care. Then she got to high school and we dove head first into the whole band booster scene. I was even on the board of the boosters for a while because we had some bully parents that were driving the program into the ground and running off any potential volunteer who didn't have a thick skin.
Obviously 2020 put a crashing halt to all of that momentum. We were even traveling with the Marching Band AT Disney World when the place closed down. Our kids marched down Main Street USA just hours before the parks closed for several months. We came back home to a county quarantine, and I haven't seen my office since. Fortunately I had brought my laptop home before vacation and had a spare docking station in my craft room, so I didn't have much need to return for anything. I still have personal effects there, which I'll need to go pack up eventually, because it's not likely that I'll still have a dedicated cubicle when the university starts letting IT back on campus. We've managed to accomplish more than they ever dreamed from home, and now they aren't super interested in keeping up the real estate to have us all back on site permanently. LOL.
I kind of thought that having a home office in my craft room would facilitate the return of inspiration, but it didn't. I'm on the crappiest run project of probably my entire IT career, and once I reached a stopping point for the day, the last thing I wanted to do was be sitting inches from my laptop. It was kind of a bummer. But we finally crossed a major milestone in December, and it looks like we might have a bit of breathing room again from now through about May. And with the kids school activities still severely pared down from prior years, I'd like to get back to filling my evenings and weekends with paper.
For anyone who is new in the last few years, HI! I'm Julie. I may have welcomed you to the forum via email if I enabled your registration. I'm one of the "originals" to this forum, all those years ago, but have suffered several bouts of "life got in the way". I've been married to Rob for 23 years, and I have a High School Senior (Nicole) and an 8th grader (Jake). Nicole is off to college next year, which was something I probably wasn't holding out hope for the last time I was hanging out here on the regular. But she turned her academic mess around, and has some pretty clear ideas about the direction she wants to go. Jake is a stinker, who is currently pulling the same "I don't have any homework" shenanigans that his sister pulled at that age, and we spent most nights reminding him that homework isn't optional just because it's boring. We're Disney people, and these past 9 months have been the first time in 12 years that we didn't have our next trip booked by the time the current trip ended.
Anyway, I'm ready to get crafting again. I have a crap ton of kits to put together and 4 years worth of pictures waiting to be printed and scrapped. It will take me a bit to get back into the habit of checking in, but I'm ready. Talk you you all again soon!