Craigslist

John and I found a cruise we'd like to go on in a couple of years that goes round trip from Sydney, Australia and circles New Zealand. It has been a life-long dream of mine to go to both Australia and New Zealand, and we LOVE cruising, so this is perfect, right?

Except, it costs A. LOT. Not so much the cruise, but getting there, and we don't want to just jump on the boat and go, so we'll want time in Australia so there's hotel and car and food and, and, and.

I had a thought, what if we saved for a trip? What if instead of just going and paying for it, we just had the money set aside for traveling? what a new concept for us! So, I started an envelope and then started looking around our house for stuff we could sell. I turned to Craigslist.

That's right, I'm going to pay for our trip one $20 item at a time. So far I have $25. I have a ways to go! :)

How do you say Beautiful?

Our dog is named Bella. She was Bella well before the craziness that is Twilight, and had I known that that was coming I would have named her something else. She is Bella because her sweet sister is Izzy, and together they are Izzybella. And let's be real here, she seriously is so cute and the sweetest dog ever, so it's only natural that she should have a name that means "beautiful" in both Spanish and Italian.

We go to the dog park now and then, and there are many dogs named Bella. It's confusing for her sometimes and more than once she has followed the wrong human (though not entirely due to her name as she is also a Shih Tzu and they are not known for their intelligence).

Yesterday we were at the park and I was thinking about all the Bella's in the world (both human and canine) and wishing I had had the foresight to name her something else. Then I started thinking that Bella is only one of the names I call her (and she responds to). I have a very long list of pet (ha) names for her. Wanna see it?

Bella
Bells
Hells Bells
Bella Brown Bottom
Bella Brown
Bella B
Chooch
Bug
Little Bug
Little Buggie
Sweets
Sweetie
Stinky
Belly
...

I think that's about it! She likes Bella the best, but if she knows I have a green bean in my hand, she'll respond to just about anything!

Sleep Schedule...so messed up

My husband works nights. Through the last 2 years that he's had this schedule he's always flipped back over to a 'normal' schedule on his days off...going to bed with me and getting up with me (sort of) in the morning.

I'm a morning person, so I've always enjoyed him being on my schedule. When I was off last week, I got all messed up, staying up late and getting up after 9:00 am, this is very unusual for me. I'm a get up around 7:30 whether or not I'm working kind of person. This was hard to break going back to work this week, but I finally got into the swing of things even managing to work out in the morning a couple of times.

This week, on Thursday and Friday nights we stayed up until after 3 a.m. Trust me when I say this is such abnormal behavior for me that even my husband couldn't believe I was still blinking after 3. I tried to get up "early" (around 10) this morning so that I could reset my crazy clock.

I was going to complain about this and then I remembered the past 2 years and what my husband has done going without sleep to match my schedule. Staying up now and then with him so that he can sleep in a long time is probably the least I can do. After all - he works hard and I appreciate all he does for me!