While I am in quarantine and working from home I need to have some rules in place.
Get dressed. If I stay in my PJs I know I will not take my job seriously. I know, I have done this before and it did not go so well. I will get dressed, not business casual as I normally get for the office, but take off my wrinkled PJs, fold them and put them away as per my usual everyday routine. And, put on some clothes, maybe jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt.
Wash my face. Clean off the gunk from and the pillow wrinkles from the night before.
Moisturize. Moisturizing is not pandemic free. This will all blow over soon enough and my skin still needs moisturizing. Not only my face but full body moisturizing.
Hygiene. Just because I am home does not mean I can skip brushing teeth and showering. I will take the time to do all of the same things that I would do on a daily basis to go into the office. Not only because this is healthy but because I do live with other people after all.
Exercise. My routine is to go to the gym every other day in the morning. I will continue to do exercising at home. I am lucky that I have a treadmill in the basement. I will continue to go on the treadmill every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I also do Yoga during my lunch hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are plenty of videos online that I can follow along so that I will not loose my routine. Exercising is a great way to get out of your own head and not think about this virus. Even if for a little while.
Eat Right. I will continue to have a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not snacking. This isn’t so easy for me as I love to snack on things like bananas, cheese and chips. I will continue to only have my Jirushi bottle of coffee and no more. Not only do I need to ration the coffee but I will not, I will NOT have more coffee than I need to.
This has become more of a manifesto than rules. I will continue to follow my routine. My only difference is sleep. Since I don’t have an hour commute I can sleep a little more but hear me now blog…I will continue to wake up early and continue to follow my rules.
I saw something really nice at Kales Pond Park in East Moriches. It is a cute little library. As you’re at the park with your kids or with your loved ones, there is always a book to keep you entertained. I love it!
On this International Women’s Day, I’d like to give a shout out to all of the moms out there that are working, taking care of their children and getting an education. I am currently working on getting my certification on Project Management and taking a course on Lean Six Sigma and soon to take another on Agile Project Management. How? My network, my husband and mother-in-law are of great help. So great that they decide to take out my little one for the day so I may study for my certifications. I am studying and taking a break by blogging and then studying some more. I take practice tests and more practice tests to reach my goal. I think as a working mom your greatest asset is your network. It truly does take a village to raise a child. Especially lively ones like mine. She is a curious being and likes to get her hands on everything. We’re always watching and explaining. And she is always asking…Why?
We at home are teaching my daughter to be a strong independent woman like just like the women before her: her grandmothers, aunts, great aunts and mother. One who can do for herself and others with love, care, passion and compassion. As women we strive for perfection. The perfect home, the perfect children, perfect hair, perfect nails. We tend to see perfection as a bit far fetched. But I believe that whatever you are doing if it has all of the characteristics of love, caring, passion and compassion, it is perfection. No one is perfect but what you do on a daily basis makes you a perfect human being. If you are doing all of the things you need to do and still have a little time for yourself, even if its at 5AM before getting the kids off out of bed to go to school. To me, You ARE perfect remember that.
This week I have been listening to Demi Lovato’s very grown up album “Tell Me You Love Me” It has the two hits, “Sorry, Not Sorry” and “Tell Me You Love Me”.
My favorite song in the album is “Daddy Issues” it has a pop sound and the lyrics make me laugh…”Don’t know how to commit, but I might want your kid. And after our first kiss, got your name on my wrist.” This type of crazy makes me belly laugh. The other song that I really like is “Ruin the Friendship” it makes me think of her friendship with the Jonas brothers especially Nick Jonas. I thought they’d get together before he got married to Prianka Chopra. Oh well, you never know what the future will bring.
The rest of the album has all of her raspy voice that I absolutely love. After day four, I was able to listen to all of the songs without skipping to my favorites like her album “Unbroken.” Sorry, but that was a total skipathon. I was only able to listen to some of the songs and couldn’t deal with the teeny bopper sound and lyrics of the majority of that album.
This album and her song from the grammy’s “Anyone” makes want to go out and see her in concert as well as purchase her next album. This one should be a more grown up album than the one before. And, I think she is now trying to prove herself since her incident with her drug overdose. I feel its always the good ones that are the most messed up. How about you. What do you think of Demi Lovato?
This year for lent, I gave up sweets. It has not been easy. I didn’t realize how much sweet things I consume throughout the day. Especially at work. When someone brings some cookies or any other baked goods into work, I needed to skip it. Isn’t that a sin? When someone makes some delicious food and you do not consume it and all it does is go to waste? Who are we kidding, nothing goes to waste in my office.
But I digress, when I was craving something to eat and opened up my snack drawer at work, all I had were sweet things, chocolate, cookies, yodles, graham crackers…do graham crackers count, they are crackers not cookies right? Well, not that day! OOPS, maybe! I’ve been cutting it down to chips and popcorn for my snacks. Sometimes, some heart healthy nuts, but have to eat around the chocolate. Cause who can have a walnut without popping a chocolate chip with it?
It’s only a couple of months, I think I can survive…maybe. It’s probably easier than last year. Last year, I gave up cursing. And that was no easy feat. And neither will be this one.
I have been playing #pokemongo for the last few weeks and have been having some fun. The whole family plays, my husband Manny, our daughter and my mother in law are all into it at this point. Yes, we are a little late to the game as this game came out years ago. Manny started playing it as needed to get his head out of working all of the time and doing something that would distract him and have fun at the same time. We hunt for Pokemon and do raids as a family and have made some new friends along the way including some that my husband already had who played the game when it initially came out and had given up on it until Manny asked them to play along with him. For my little one, we use an old phone for and hooked up a hotspot in Manny’s phone and she is as happy as a clam. When it comes to the pokestops and collecting all of the items and of course, fighting with the bosses. She also loves to give and receive gifts with mommy, daddy and grandma as well as the new friends she’s made who are my husbands friends. We’re not letting her be friends with the random people that play with us. We don’t know who they are! No connection with those!
Last weekend was a community day and we went to our local main street with our jackets, hats and gloves and hunted for Rhyhorn. I collected about five of them and one shiny Rhyhorn until my phone’s battery died in the middle of community day. So I helped my little one with her collecting as she put her very cold hands in her pockets and we took turns on collecting pokemon. At the end of the day, we collected a bunch of pokemon including some friends and those friends collected more fiends and we did a raid for a Tyranitar.
This game has gathered us as a family and placed us all in one car and in one place to do something fun with our daughter that well, doesn’t cost us anything at all, except gas to get to the local town or park locations. It is fun, my daughter can learn new ways to have a good time without having to spend much money. Spend quality time with her family. And ask many, many questions. Such as, “Mommy, why did they make churches?” “Mommy, why did they make cemeteries?” “Mommy, why did they make post offices?” and so on. Why is it always mommy and not “daddy, why did they make, fill in the blank” I do not know. But its cute to hear how her little mind works. My little one can learn about new locations in her town such as places of worship, churches, firehouses, and libraries around town. By the way, she wants to go to all of the libraries we pass and see if they have good movies or toys to play with. Usually we go out hunting for pokemon on the weekends or after dinner, so they are usually closed or we are on a mission and can not stop to go to the library. Except for me, when I go to the local town, I always stop at my local library to pick up some music or a book that I have requested. Along the way, I stop at the poke stops and pick up some pokemon. Safely, of course, as I pull over to pick up the characters.
Here’s the No Go part! The the last couple of days, I have been receiving an error on my game and am not able to play. I have been receiving an authentication error and am not able to log into the game. We when to the local town yesterday and we were only able to pick up the pokestops. There were no pokemon to be found. But there were a lot of police out on the town. Were they scare of the police? Does pokemon Gods turn them off on Friday nights? We were very confused. I restarted my game and it was when it gave me that dreadful error. I was very sad that I was not able to log in and play. It was a perfectly good Friday night and we could stary out a little longer since there was no school or work the next day. We tried everything to have the game back on. Turn off the phone, restart the game, remove the game and re-download the game…nothing. We then tried to contact customer support and it turns out to be a bot which told us to wait and try again later. Darn it…shortly after we went home as the other phones were also not working. We figured, lets pick this up again tomorrow morning.
Today, I again could not log into the game as it had the same error. My daughter and mother in law has the same issue, but after much searching through the phone we were able to get them back online and onto the game. As for me, it took a some more time and a lot of patience. It eventually came back on in the afternoon but by that time I was so frustrated and tired of trying to get back up online that I want to give up on this game if its going to be like this again. It took an entire morning and afternoon to get it back. I don’t want to do that again.
So, I ask you…PokémonGo Yes or No? Do you also get to not play for a day or two and then get back into it? Does it loose its luster after a few days of not playing? Is this game that old that no one plays anymore and we are way too late to the party? What do you think, should I keep on playing or focus my efforts on other hobbies. Sure, I need to find one first, but that is beside the point…just answer the question lol.
Let me tell you how much I like my blogging through wordpress.com. I am able to put down my thoughts into words through this great site. Currently, I use the free site and the free site is fantastic. I am able to view stats on how many people view my blog and from where…facebook,twitter,pinterest. The greatest thing about it is for me to know when I will be able to actually use this site to make some money with it. At this point I don’t have enough people looking at my blogs. That’s what the stats tell me. I will need to continue to blog and see if I can do this thing. I’m not sure why I don’t have a lot of people looking at my blogs. Not sure if the content isn’t what people are looking for or if my writing just plainly sucks!
Meanwhile I will keep doing what I am doing and what makes me happy.
I like to review music, books and beauty products. If you’re into that too, than take a look at my other posts.
Both were purchased in Target near my job. I sat and watched The Devil Wears Prada while sitting with the products on my face and hair. The direction for the hair mask states to be under a hair drier for 15 minutes. Since I do not have one, I improvised and used a blow-dryer over the plastic bag. Meanwhile I also dried my facemask with the blow-dryer. Probably not the best thing to do, but hey it worked to dry the mask faster as this one was to be on the face for 20 minutes or until dry. Guess what, when the hair was done the face was done at the same time. Two birds one blow-dryer.
After my shower, my skin felt like I had just placed primer on it before makeup. I then put lotion on my face and it went on so smoothly, I was impressed. I would highly recommend this mask, and by the way it smelled delicious!
As for the hair mask, what a difference it made on my hair. It feels so smooth and voluptuously brilliant. Check out my pics and see my results.
I have been working very hard on growing out my hair. I’m constantly putting on coconut oil to get it to grow faster. Has it worked?…not really but it makes my hair nice and shiny. Monthly hair masks are also part of my regiment. You see, after I had my daughter I lost a lot of hair and the only thing I could think of is how young girls and women also have to go through this and I’d like to help them in any way I can. I know its only hair but when it happened to me, I became very sad about it. My hair was constantly falling off and even worse was in the shower. I’d need to clean the drain almost every week as it would get clogged with so much hair that was falling.
All I could think of at that time was about kids with leukemia or cancer, or alopecia, and all I wanted was to do something bigger than myself and help out a kid. Put a smile on their face. Unfortunately, I never thought of doing this when I was a kid. It never crossed my mind that I could help another kid just by growing out my hair. I wish I would have done it more times during my your life, but hey, it’s never too late to start now.
I’ve searched high and low on organizations that help out and decided to go with Wigs for Kids. As per their Twitter page “Wigs for Kids is a charitable organization providing free custom wigs made from real hair to children who lost their hair due to illness, treatments or burns.” Wigs for Kids also has a facebook page if that is your preference to find out more about them. Then there is always their website.
I have donated to Wigs for Kids before and it felt so good. They even made me feel like a million bucks when they sent me a postcard back stating that they had used my hair to make a wig for a kid. I loved it! I am looking to do it again and again until I can no longer donate due to coloring my grays. For now I have been coloring with a demi permanent color so that I will be able to donate to this organization.
If you’d like to donate, go to any salon, it doesn’t need to be a participating salon, any salon will do and let them know you’d like to donate. The hair dresser will tie you hair into pony tails and cut away. Take a zip log bag with you and stow it away then send it to the charity of your choice. Please keep in mind that when the hair is cut, it needs to be dry. Wet hair can get mold and then they can not use it.
Check out my before and after pictures of the last time I donated 12 inches of hair.
If you have little ones and its snowing outside and you want to keep the inside, here’s something fun to do. Go to Target and get some soft plush snowballs from the dollar isle. I have a little girl who is adventurous but prone to get sick quickly in the cold. We decide it was best if she stayed indoors during the snowstorm. We made forts and had a snowball fight with these plushy balls.
If all else fails, make some hot cocoa and make chocolate chip cookies in the oven. This will keep the kids and the house nice and warm.
Isabel's world 