Astronaut App 2011, done!

Done!
It wasn't nearly as painful as the last go-around. Maybe I should have proof-read it more thoroughly, or maybe it's just that this year I'm not so stressed out about the outcome. I am what I am, and now it's all on paper headed to the selection office. There are only so many ways you can represent how cool you are, and here I've done my best. Applications close Jan 27. They start letting folks know if they're even interested or not in the March-July timeframe.

This house

In April we will have lived in this house for 11 years. We long ago surpassed the record for living in any one place for so long years ago, actually.

A few weeks ago Anna said she wanted Santa to paint her bathroom and bedroom rainbow colors (rainbow is her favorite "color"). Paul and I realized at that point that we can still remember very clearly the day we redid her bathroom (that wasn't then hers), and that that day was about 10 years ago already. Or more even. We remember trying to pull down the dreaded teddy bear wall paper and realizing it was actually stuck to the drywall, so we said "what the hell" and painted right over it. The tiny little wall paper tool marks are still visible, but the wallpaper has still held underneath that paint for all these years. Since then we have just kept it clean and damn it still looks new, even after 10 years!

Right before Anna was born we put in a ceiling heater because that bathroom can get cold! Over the past few years, he ceiling has started to sag, and Paul's fixing it as I type.
This week Anna is at my mom's in Austin. And we think that after 10 years, the little bathroom is in fact due for an update. Why not go rainbow?

We realize when she gets home and we surprise her with it, that surprise will give all of about 5 minutes' worth of excitement. We know. And so the reason we are doing it is because...well, it's been 10 years. Why NOT go rainbow?

Oh Christmas Tree

Not feeling the Christmas spirit during hospital caroling.

Sensitivity

Anna-Marie has been asking a lot of questions over the past month or two that shows me she's becoming more and more sensitive and self-aware...

She's never been the type of kid you have to be hard on to get her to behave. Generally if you simply tell her to knock it off if she's acting up, she's compliant with minimal fuss. In fact, we've learned if you lay into her too hard or with a harsh tone without some kind of fair warning, she melts into tears. Geeze.

Not to say I don't lose my temper: I can only say GO BRUSH YOUR TEETH a handful of times before I lose my cool and the world around us both collapses...and of course we've have had the major knock-down, drag out battles. But in general, if she's acting like a little booger you really don't have to get into her face and scold...more like a firm "knock it off, you're not supposed to run in here" is enough to suffice.

She's always been that way and yes, she is an only child, and yes, I do think she's special when others probably don't (I'm her mom!), and yes, others may think I hover or protect her too much but I've come to terms with that lately and I'm starting to care less about that...and speaking my mind about it when I feel like it...but I'm digressing...

Every morning when we walk into school, she asks: "Mommy can anyone see boogers on my nose?" At first I didn't get what she meant but apparently she has realized she doesn't want to look like her boogery friends this time of year.

On the drive to school the other day she asks: "Mommy, why does everybody look at me when I make a mistake or do something wrong?"

A few weeks ago: "why does everyone look at me when I walk into the classroom?"

In a restaurant: "Why does that lady keep looking at me?"

"Why...why...why...ME" with the behavioral questions.

Mostly my answers are focused on the fact that she, too, looks at people when they walk into the classroom. And she must be staring at that woman herself to know that the woman is staring at her! And I ask her if she stares at her friends when they too make mistakes. And that everyone makes mistakes, and me too, and here's how to deal with it. Mostly it's a discussion centered on the fact that it's the behavior of "everyone" and it's nothing personal (she's the center of my own universe but not the center of THE universe). She seems to be getting it and this morning on the way to school instead of asking "Why...?" she said something to the effect that it's OK if she makes mistakes at school and everyone looks at her.

Are all 4 year olds this self-aware? Good Lord. I just assumed kids at this age get fussed for pulling their crap and the bounce off to go pull more crap...not melt into a personal pile of tears. I just assumed no kid this age even realized others were looking at them, much less about the mistakes they worry about making (and no I don't think she's this self-aware because she's the center of my own universe and has come to expect his means she's the center of EVERYONE'S universe).

Yes she's an only child, sure we treat her like she's the most special thing to ever happen to us (she is). We don't tell her she's perfect and we don't tell her to be mistake-free. We walk the fine line between "that's the best letter n I've ever seen!" and "your n looks more like an H!" because I'm bombarded with the latest motherhood information that too much praise of your child makes them think they can do no wrong and not enough praise destroys self confidence.

Well, Hell.

Each kid is born with innate character traits. Why not carve your approach to raising them around the kid you know? Why do we judge each other, still, as mothers? I've never been tough enough to let her cry it out, and yes I still have a monitor in her room because I'm her mother and if she needs me at 2AM, I will come up. She's perfectly capable of dressing herself, brushing her own teeth, and buckling her own seat belt if I just leave her right the Hell to it.

Good grief. Sensitive much? Gee, where could she get it....?

Serenity Now

All for the little ones, Christmas Joy!

I'm the sucker mom...a sign up sheet of stuff for parents to bring so the kids could decorate cookies... All the parents signed up for everything but... the darned STAR and SNOWMAN cookies! Good grief how are they going to decorate cookies without the cookies?! I remembered I bought one of those stupid huge cookie cutter containers last year with all kinds of shapes and sizes, figuring I have a kid so I'd be using it occasionally. This being one occasion. Someone had to come through on the very foundation of cookie decorating!

This crap is harder than it looks...Hell I don't even do playdough.






And yes, several innocent snowman lives were lost in my kitchen tonight. It was a massacre but the joy on those little boogers' faces that only their teachers will see tomorrow will be worth their sacrifice.

God I think I ate too much dough.

Christmas Tree 2011

This is our fifth year of Christmas tree decorating photos with Anna. I remember year 1 when she was learning to crawl! Look at this!

Our prime time debut: Fox News

Here's the final piece that came out tonight on the 5:00 news. I think it turned out lovely and Anna was proud of seeing me on TV :) She said I did a great job! She also said she remembered when daddy was on TV talking about his patients and doctors and he did a good job too! Pretty good considering that was last year! We have gotten several inquiries, a few new customers have signed up, and a few about to place orders. Even got requests to expand to other parts of Houston. So far it's been good!

http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/local/111206-nasa-scientist-launches-grocery-business

Dusty Plasmas, An Empty Building, a News Feature, and Major Exam PASSED

I'm trying for the life of me to get familiar with dusty plasmas. It's not so hard to understand; I'm just having a hard time focusing on the relevance of investigating them on the space station. It's part of a set of charts I have to have ready for an upcoming Flight Readiness Review. These FRR's happen with every launch of humans to the space station, and so my charts are supposed to give a status on some of the cool research that's happening up there. Dusty plasmas are cool, but I'm supposed to talk it in a way that others will see that point too...

In other news, today a film crew and reporter (Tom Zizka) from Houston Fox News 26 came out to film us at Kroger to do a piece on the Grocery Station. Before Thanksgiving I had submitted a press release to the local news stations to see if I could drum up interest in a story. Fox contacted us and in less than 24 hours they were filming! This will air tonight all over Houston at 5PM. When I get a link to it, I'll post it here. I think the filming went well...my #1 shopper, P, was filmed while shopping an order, and our friend L came with her daughter as the customer for pick-up. They even interviewed CP, the Kroger store manager, who was really nervous in front of the camera. In fact, Kroger has a strict policy in when they let cameras into their stores period. So in a pinch yesterday I had to sweet talk the Kroger PR lady to give the camera crew access in a quick turnaround. She voiced her concerns, which I was sure to cover in the interview, so I think all the right things were said. In all we spent about 1.5 hours with the crew. I got to ask Tom how the heck you get a reporter's voice like that, (to which is cameraman giggled), and Tom said he was born with it :) Destiny! He also shared a few reporter secrets about his job, which I thought was awesome and could come in handy with my NASA interviews. Incidentally, when I do NASA interviews, there's usually some NASA PAO rep involved for the sake of our own protection. So today I felt a little naked out there without a pro, but then again, it was also kinda freeing in that who the heck could I piss off (other than Kroger)? I'M THE BOSS! Anyway, I'm hoping it comes out well tonight!!! AND you'd think it would generate orders. I guess we'll see now, WON'T WE? On that front, business has been slow but steady with repeat customers. Slow but steady. Not enough to sustain our shoppers for real where pay is concerned, though. MORE MORE MORE ORDERS, PLEASE!!

As I was wrapping up with the film crew, Paul was meeting with the owners of a new building right around the corner from his current location. All the discussions he had with them today were right on target with what he wants, so who knows, this may be it! It's an empty space in a new building and they really want a medical facility there. So they're working with Paul and the terms seem nice so far. We'll see....

As I was pulling back into the parking lot for NASA today, I got a text from TJ in that she passed her first round of major certification-crazy-you-don't-ever-get-to-do-acupuncture-DAMMIT-if you-don't-pass-this exam. This was exhilarating for HER and ME! Woooo-hooo! TJ hates these exams but this go 'round she totally grabbed this Texas Bull by the horns and tackled it. No messing around. There is much celebration to be had!

In Anna news, she is beautiful, happy, and smart and sweet. We love her to pieces and enjoy spending time with her. She's at the age where you can reason with her with no freak-outs, you can answer her thoughtful questions and ask her tough ones, and just darn-well talk to her like the little person she is. A few weeks ago we brought her for an eye exam and they had to put eye drops into her eyes. While I had to hold her down for the Flu Mist a few months ago, the eye drops were a freakin' piece of cake! Who knew? She still gives us the spontaneous I LOVE YOUs and "you're the best mommy in the whole wide world" and all that stuff. She's also learning that if mommy says no, maybe she should try daddy! At this point, it's not a manipulative thing directly; it's more of heck, why not give it a shot? I know, I know, this is how it starts. We're aware.

Also today she told me that daddy said "shit" and he shouldn't because that's a bad word. She had asked me about this a few weeks ago: "Momma, is shit a bad word?" The word "shit" coming out of a 4 year old's mouth is well...freaking funny. Sorry.

She's also learning to lie, and when we bust her it breaks her heart she disappointed us. If we're too hard on her she melts into tears and apologies. Dang, this child is SO SENSITIVE! Love her tons.
I will be applying for the astronaut corps this go 'round, since the opportunity is open until sometime in Jan. I haven't really done much to get my application together yet, since I'm keeping pretty busy otherwise. But I'll get it in.

Teaching is officially done for the semester, woo-hoo! I get my Monday nights back until mid Jan. No Disney trip this year (lamenting, seriously lamenting), but we run the Houston Half marathon mid Jan. I ran my fastest 5k this weekend. Mile 1 was a 10:07 pace (HOLY COW!), Mile 2 was a 10:37 pace, and my overall for the 5k was a pace of 10:54 or something. That's a sub 11 minute pace, which I think is a record for me. And I felt GREAT! I could have gone faster.

Anyway, that's us in a nutshell. What a great day! At the same time the Grocery Station was being filmed, Paul was looking at a new building, and TJ was passing her major exam. LOVE THAT when that kind of energy aligns! Wonder what Anna's day was like? I bought her a whole bunch of neat stuff from a book fair I ran into today. She'll love that! Life is good!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are in Arkansas this year, at Paul's family's house. A 9 hr drive. I can't even believe how good Anna was, just drawing and listening to music for the whole ride. Not even a movie! When it got dark we started getting goofy with the mini flashlight and I put it in my mouth to light my cheeks up, which she thought was hilarious...and which she tried about 20 min later after a meal of chicken nuggets, fries, and chocolate milk. This part is important.

The only thing I saw was her cheeks light up and then all I heard was "eww, this has mommy's germs!" And I saw her taking the flashlight out of mouth, heard her gag, and saw stuff coming out of her mouth! And by stuff I mean chocolate milk, chicken nuggets, and fries. And while Paul was yelling at me to DO something, my brain was saying "does not compute" another round came spewing out. This round I held the Happy Meal box out as her target and told Paul he'd better pull over!

Out the nose and all, it was mighty impressive! She was grossed out about her first puke episode ever. Especially about the nose vomit. She actually had a few rounds of it, all because of a gag reflex she associated with mommy's germs (she won't even drink after anyone...germs you know).

Puke all over my precious truck that she doesn't even like to spill crumbs in (sorry mommy!). Luckily we were right around the corner from our final destination so we rinsed her mouth, wiped up the obvious, and gave her a piece of gum. On the drive away, she just said she was "so sorry mommy", as if I'd be mad! Ha oh poor girl! She showed up to Paul's family in pink leopard print pajama bottoms and a glittery shirt that said "My Daddy Rocks", along with10 hour-old messed out Dorothy braids. Hello all! She was surprisingly fine the rest of the night and I congratulated her for getting through her first puke episode. Yes I'm aware we are lucky to have made it this far without experiencing vomit. She had a great rest of the night and Paul did a good job of cleaning the puke out of the truck.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Random Photos

Halloween 2011

The hand-on-hip automatic pose cracks me right the hell up!










Yes there is a fine line between Hooker Transvestite Barbie, Lady Gaga, and the Good Witch Glenda. My getup came after what was a hilarious scene of the Scarecrow trying to zip me into an old prom dress, with Anna looking on in her Dorothy costume. I prayed for darkness to come quickly!





This year's fearless candy crew! So stinking fun! I can remember when Anna and M were small enough to share that wagon as we took them to go look at Christmas lights through the neighborhood!! No way now! I don't remember it being that small!

What great memories we made Halloween night! We are so lucky to have such good friends to go with. And the weather was just perfectly cool and clear!



And finally the aftermath!





Love!

Slow trickle and a fire hose

Here's the slow trickle part:
The orders for the Grocery Station have been super slow. Totalling only 3 now. I suppose I made the rookie mistake of thinking somehow my idea would be SO FANTASTIC that word would spread and I'd be overwhelmed with orders :) HAHA. Well...

We get about 5-12 new visitors at our website everyday that I can see. We have about 6 new customers signed up and we've totaled just 3 orders. What this tells me is we need to advertise more outside of just the Kroger and also we need to offer coupons off of orders. So here we go! I just look how far Paul has come with his client base and all that he's done to get there. We're just a few weeks in. This is going to take time. OK it's slower than I'd like but I also work full-time during the day and I have no budget to pay someone else to promote it. As such, we shall be grass roots! Besides I'm not sure I could handle an influx of crazy orders at this time. My head would very surely pop off.


The fire hose part:
My NASA ('real job") has been so fun and exciting still! I've been doing tons of speaking, and scaling back my travel too. Last week I got to speak at a leadership seminar of big wigs from Fortune 500 companies, which was so darned cool. I got to meet a CIA trainer, and leadership representatives from AT&T, Verizon, and Aetna, just to name a few. They all thought that I  was cool but I was keeping my own excitement down! My talk was at Space Center Houston, and afterwards I got to join them for dinner in the Starship Galaxy room. This is a neat room with stars on the ceiling and actual Apollo era artifacts. I'd been there just once as a visitor but I have to say it's the coolest place I've ever eaten dinner! Plus free wine :) WOO-HOO! I was invited by the coordinator to speak at a Women's Leadership conference in NYC in April. I hope it all holds because that would be amazing!

Tomorrow I give my first ever astronaut briefing to the Expedition 33/34 crew on ISS Science. Julie usually gives this and I have just observed but now she's out of town and so it's my turn! I'm totally game these days, feeling comfortable with the material, after having had to answer the oddest questions on all of my speaking events. One of the astronauts is a flight doc I worked with back when I was in Engineering, before he became an astronaut. So this is pretty neat.

Anna is hilarious these days. She does have her moments of whininess that we'd like to beat out of her but otherwise she's just growing up! She is giving us "Are you CRAZY" looks that I thought was funny and then I caught myself doing it at work today and realized then where she must have gotten it from. Yesterday in the car she asked what a "soul" is. And she is recognizing the sight words she's learning in class everywhere we go. She's excited to read whatever she can and that one caught me off guard!

Tonight is Trick Or Treating, SO FREAKING FUN! The weather should be rocking! Anna will be Dorothy and she's talked me and Paul into make-shift Good Witch and Scarecrow costumes. This will be half-assed rigged from the best products we could find last minute, but for me includes a blonde wig and a pink dress I wore at a wedding once (I was pleased to see that I fit into this pre-baby dress...SCORE!) Oh and Anna's princess crown. Stay tuned for rediculous pictures!

Overheard...

At dinner last night I overheard a conversation between Anna, L (4 yrs old), and M (6 yrs old).

L: "God is in my HEART!"
M: "God is up in SPACE!"
A: "Noooo, my mommy said that God is EVERYWHERE!"

HAHA, I think they covered ALL of the bases! Is this what typical 4 and 6 yr olds are talking about? Oh man, I LOVE IT. Totally tickled me!

Keeping Up!

Ok I can't possibly keep going at this rate. Sleep is elusive, TV unheard of, and thank God I am comfortable with the teaching material finally because I have zero time to immerse myself in it. My running schedule is certainly taking the biggest hit, with no energy to give much speed or miles. Also waking up that early after just 4 hrs of sleep, well....
The 3 hour sliver I get to spend with Anna between 5:00 pick up and 8:00 bedtime is golden and mostly protected. The problem is that my brain doesn't stop and neither does my body. This level of intensity is potentially damaging and I am a pretty hard worker as it is. The week has been a roller coaster non stop, the details dizzying and this morning the 3 of us made for one exhausted household. I think Anna has the most exhausted parents in her class right now. By the way. Yesterday Paul spoke to her class about physical therapy, which I heard was really cute.

At any rate my exhaustion right now is just seemingly the infinite amount of work to be done regarding the Grocery Station. Now that we for the website ready forte customers, my shopper retention has been too low. The good team I built up in September has since moved on to other things that actually pay them money NOW (who wants to wait for a new start up to ramp up?). I have a few left but now the hiring is back sucking up my time so much so I haven't been able to focus on advertising. These things I think need to happen in parallel but there's only so much time I have available to work into the evenings to try to pull it all together. I'd pay someone to handle it but that's over budget! It's like energy in a system: you can't possibly get
Something from Nothing.

This is me whining. This means I need to make some changes in my processes, which I'm about to do. Just like anyone else who is starting something new, I just need to identify the efficiencies. Next will be a more restful week.

Our first order!

Yesterday we had our first order at the Grocery Station. A real, live person we'd never ever met before signed up for an account and placed an order of groceries of around $190 online. Plus an $11.50 tip and the shopping fee of around $35. Wow! I took off lunch hour at work to help Pam shop since it was our first one and I needed to be sure the wacky operations concept I came up with actually would work from beginning to end.

It was a bigger order than we had allotted time for, so it's a good thing I was there so we could tag team it! We were dashing through the store like it was one of those Grocery Game TV shows! The folks at Kroger were saying something to us about how exciting, our first order, but we were dashing too fast to take that in :) We made it within the designated timeslot, though, with really no hiccups.

How about that?

If the biggest flaw is that we need to allot ourselves more time for larger orders, that's not bad at all.

It was cool to meet the customer, too. Her reason for using this service? She hates to grocery shop, period. Just two nights before, she was telling her husband she'd PAY SOMEONE to just GROCERY SHOP for her! this woman has two kids, both in school, she stayed home all day, but she still hadn't shopped in 4 weeks because she dreaded it.

Interesting to see what the stories will be. We have so far about 5 customers who have created an account but not yet placed an order. I think this might be because all of the fabulous shoppers (but a few) that I hired the first go round have since bailed and moved on to real paying jobs, so now there aren't many openings for customers to place an order. So I've done another round of hiring, and will be doing group interviews weekly. I can't keep up with the individual interviews anymore! I want my nights back at home!

I actually know that when more shoppers sign up, thus opening more customer timeslots available, then more customers will order. And so that's how it goes...our web site gets anywhere from 5-20 hits per day (around 5-10 being "new" visitors).

And Customer #1 says already she'll be a repeat. And her grocery cost, fee, and tip are the EXACT target market we're looking for. Here's to more like her!

After I got back from that crazy shopping trip, I took a minute to reflect on what the heck just happened as I sat in the parking lot at NASA. I said thank you out loud, acknowledged how crazy, insane it was that we just pulled off for REAL, with someone's trust, a concept that started in my back yard a few months ago, and if for nothing else, that later I can say "I totally did that."

That's completely nuts.
Wooooo-hoooo!

I am $30 closer to paying off my student loans ;)