One of those days.

Today was one of "those" days. I can't say I had a bad day, nor can I say the day was great. It was just one of those days where you find yourself sighing a whole bunch. I can't properly summarize it in a dozen facebook posts, nor is it really interesting enough to blog about. However, this being my personal blog, I can post uninteresting things :) So hah!

I'll put the interesting stuff first though so you can get that and move on if you'd like. The Dance Central Challenge I've been doing with Kelly Brown from The Married Gamers is on week 2. For details about this week's challenge and info on last week's (if you missed it) click on the word here. This weeks challenge is to do the same song 13 times in a row and is appropriately titled the Unlucky Challenge.

I attempted to do last weeks challenge and I will openly admit that I only did it ONE time. We're supposed to be doing it three times a week. I'm a lazy bum and I'm not denying it.

I'm also behind on this week's challenge, but at least I have a good excuse. I got an icky stomach flu. Good for my weight loss goal for the week, but not so great for the Dance Central challenges. I tried to do the 13 songs tonight, but only made it through the song 6 times. Exhaustion and frustration at my oldest daughter made me throw up my hands and give up. I WILL try again tomorrow.

Hannah, who for the most part took care of me while I was sick has reverted back to her evil ways today in full form. For those that don't know her, she's a bit of a hypochondriac. I'm SURE there are things that are wrong sometimes, but she's SOOOO dramatic about them. She can't sleep, because she itches. So I'm trying to keep her rubbed down with lotion, because it's probably just dry skin.

Today she comes home and asks me to check her for lice. I almost die, because I've had enough of that for one lifetime. I do not find buggies, but I do find lots of poorly washed hair and tons of flakes. I've shown her enough times how to wash her hair and aside from doing it myself every night I'm not sure what else to do, but every day it's something...grrr.

Also, I'm really frustrated because I was sick. I had all these plans for a "me day" on Monday with my friends and that got cancelled. I really dislike being sick, and figured I should be done with it by today and back to normal, but my body had other plans. So hopefully if I get another good night's sleep, hopefully without the strange dreams about me being part of a Charlie's Angel's style group of crime-fighting women (that was weird last night) I'll be back on track tomorrow.

Monday was supposed to be my day to get a gym membership going too, something I've been putting off for months and talking about just as long. I'm ready to get rolling on my goals for this year, although being sick really did help me stay on track :) My goal for tomorrow is to at least try to get out of the house and do at least a mini-workout.

What else was I frustrated about? Oh yeah, Hailey is on day three of not napping until late at night and I think it's my fault though so I can't complain too much.

Anyhoooo, as I expected this was an entirely boring blog. But it gave me something to do, because going to bed at 8pm is entirely too early. Bug ya later, hope you're having a good one, and blah blah blah.

New Year Update - Part 2

Shocker of all shockers I'm actually posting more than once in a month!! As promised I'm continuing to update you all on all the new and fabulous things that are happening in my life this year. I'm cranking up the Lady Antebellum on my iPod and busting out my 2nd update for the year.

My most exciting news for the New Year is having been asked to write for The Married Gamers. When I left Sarcastic Gamer a few months ago I really thought my time in the gaming industry had come to an end. After nearly three years and over 100 episodes of doing the SGPink podcast my life had become too hectic to keep up with gaming and I was unable to feel like I had anything worthy to contribute. Once my classes ended in December and the holidays went away I was left feeling like something was missing.

I left Sarcastic Gamer, claiming I didn't feel like I belonged without a podcast, and that I didn't think I was a "writer". But the more I thought about it, the more I missed writing. I just didn't like having a "quota" to meet each week. Quota to me causes stress, the feeling that if I don't do what is expected of me that I'd be letting someone down. So I bowed out and found myself really missing writing little blurbs here and there about gaming stuff that interests me.

I participated as a host in an Xbox Live Community Playdate not too long ago with The Married Gamers and had a blast. Kelly (the wifey of The Married Gamers) and I met a few years ago at PAX Prime and have been talking on the phone on and off since then. She can be a bit long winded in her conversations, but I love talking to her and her excitement and energy for gaming always gives me a boost. For some odd reason every time I talk to her, Hailey poops too, which is odd...I'm not saying I dread her calls, but it's uncanny how that works. But I've gotten off the point of this blog....

Kelly had a great idea for a new podcast for her site that included me. Long story short, the podcast idea fell through, but she still wanted me on as a writer. To say I was insanely flattered is putting it VERY mildly. So once again, I had to stop and think...am I a writer? I wrote for SG because it was mandatory pretty much. I've never considered myself a writer, or an industry personality for that matter. Harley asking me to be on our podcast and being a part of SG was my very first experience with being a part of something like this. But somehow being asked to write and be part of a site outside of SG made me stop and think that maybe, just maybe I really do belong in the crazy world of gaming.

Most people only know me as "Jax". I created and overplayed that personality as any actress would playing a role. Jax was a personality for Sarcastic Gamer. Being new to all of this I might have overplayed her role a bit too much. So when I mentioned to my husband that I wanted to get back into the gaming stuff he kindly asked me to show them my other side, and to leave behind all the Jax craziness. Initially I was offended a bit, but he had a point. There is so much more to me than that personality I was milking too much for SG. I am a great mom, great wife, and gaming is a HUGE part of our family. So joining a site like The Married Gamers is the perfect fit for me. I look forward to working my experiences with my kids into my articles, taking them to events, and possibly even having them help me do some reviews.

I'm more than a "Drunken Gamer", and while I have no plans to change my blog name I do hope to show all of you the other side of me in 2012. There are people out there who hate me viciously, and sadly enough those people don't know me. I'd love to buy you a drink sometime and have a chat with you. The ones that do know that I'm really a pretty great and caring person. I don't claim to know everything in the world about gaming, but it is something I love and it is a very large part of my life and something I love sharing with my kids and my husband.

My first article on The Married Gamers went up today, it's not amazing, but it is a start and helped me shake the cobwebs off of my writing fingers :) You can check it out here. And pretty please if you do read it, leave a comment on the site. One thing that has always killed me is that no matter how many page views my articles get, if no one leaves a comment I don't feel like my article was ever read. Just the same as this blog. Just say hi, or something, because otherwise I feel like I've wasted my time. It's like someone writing a book, and everyone loving it but no one ever saying they did so they stop writing.

Someone please tell me you want to hear more from me...please?

New Year Update - Part 1

I have been sitting here for the last few minutes just staring at this screen, wondering how to summarize all the excitement and changes and ideas I have for 2012. I've come to the conclusion that if I were to attempt to do this all in one big blog update that it would be a million pages long and no one would read it. (Not that any of you actually read through all this crap anyway) So I am going to do this in "parts".

Since I haven't posted in over a month I'll just sum up the holidays for now and say they were great. Bill came home from Japan for a couple weeks, we had the family over for Christmas Eve and had quite the slumber party, waking up Christmas morning and enjoying it with Bill, the kids, my parents, my sis & hubbie, and my grandmother. Christmas should always be like that :)

I finished up my AA in teaching in December too. Because of all the stress and exhaustion and flat out almost losing my mind I am taking a couple semesters off. This is the first time that I can remember where I don't have work or school and can focus on myself and my family and I am LOVING IT!!!

So, my Part 1 update has to do with what I am planning to do with all of this "free" time. I say this in quotations because I do still have a toddler to chase, and a house and kids to take care of while hubbie is away in Japan. My main goal is to take advantage of this time and focus on my health and fitness, and the overall improvement of the way I feed myself and the kids. Moderation isn't a word I use very often, but I'm working on finding a good balance between the right foods and making the fun foods a special treat instead of an every day thing around here.

I'm actually starting to properly use an app I've had on my iPhone for quite some time now. It's myfitnesspal and it is a free app for iPhone, iPad, and online as well. It makes tracking your goals and the foods you eat incredibly simple. Now that I have an iPad 2 (thanks Bill!) I downloaded the app for it and it's my favorite! However using it with my iPhone is the best because you can use your iPhone a little easier to scan your foods. But I'm getting ahead of myself here...

With this app you can hop online and set your weight loss goal. Then using any of the versions you can easily track your foods during the day. There is even a scanner on your phone or iPad you can use so when I make a salad I can just scan the salad, my dressing, and whatever else I use, select the correct serving size, and it enters all the nutritional value for me. It keeps track of everything all day long and provides a summary so you can track your carbs, sodium, etc and see what you need more, or less of as you go through your day. The iPad app does everything the iPhone does and offers even MORE features like a pretty little pie chart that shows you how your nutrition is tracking for the day.

My absolute favorite thing is that you can add your friends and see how they're doing and cheer them on as they complete their diary each day, drop weight, or just give them a "good job!" when they burn off a ton of calories at the gym. Oh, and when you DO exercise those calories you burn off go back into your ticker for the day and can be used for even more snacking, or maybe even a glass of wine at the end of the night. I'll let you check out the rest for yourself, but for a free app it's amazing and definitely a valuable tool. If you use it or plan to add me as a friend: Jaxboxchick

Ok, now that I've got my food tracking I had to address the whole exercise thing. My original thought was that I would get a gym membership that provides child care. I'm still planning to do this later this month. I think it would give me a nice break each day from Hailey (especially since I have NO babysitter close by) and get us both out of the house. For now, we've been taking walks up to the big park in our neighborhood which is a good 2.25-2.75 mile walk depending on which way we go. I push Hailey in the stroller and the kids take their bikes or skates. We've also been doing some Dance Central battles in the house.

The other day I noticed a great post on The Married Gamers about a Dance Central Challenge that Kelly Brown is participating in. Check out the link for all the details. Basically Dance Central is busting out some fitness challenges every week. I came in a little late to the game this week, so in order to get my 3x in by Friday I started last night and need to do the challenge three days in a row. This week you're supposed to do 10 songs in a row by a certain choreographer.

I did this last night on EASY and almost died. My wonderful son hopped in for the last four songs to help encourage me and keep me going and we really had fun doing the challenge. My body is screaming at me today, but I plan to stick with it and try to do all the challenges this year. You can find these challenges each week at DanceCentral.com. Let me know if you're participating and we can cheer each other on.

I think this is good enough for now...lol. Look for more in the next couple weeks from me, I've got a lot more to say...as always...

Rocking Good Night, Rocking Great Day

Last night I had the great honor of hosting a room for the Xbox Live Community Playdate with my friends at The Married Gamers. They're all great people and I was flattered that they asked me to participate. After having many bad experiences gaming with people on Xbox Live I've kind of avoided it for a while, but I was pleasantly surprised that everyone I played with was awesome. Sure, there were some people that didn't get the whole idea of how the game night worked. One kid didn't even own the game and was waiting for me to invite him to play, another didn't have an XBL Gold subscription, and I did have to report one person for his "Wanna see my...?" message in my inbox. But for the most part I had a blast.

An hour or two before the gaming started I fired up the Xbox and spent about all of the 1800 MS points I had on new songs. Oddly enough I didn't get a chance to play any of them during the game night, do people not like country songs? My oldest daughter and I played (SHE likes country) for an hour before I realized I should probably not exhaust my voice before the night starts. Hailey even played along with us nicely thanks to me giving her the Little Tikes guitar I had planned to use as a Christmas present. This is a great guitar if you have a toddler that likes to play along with you, definitely worth the money. I picked mine up for only $9.99.

After we were done with our game night I recorded with the others that participated and that podcast should be up by Sunday, I'll try and post the link if I decide to blog again. Don't want to make too much of a habit of it.

If last night was great, today was even better. I had my stepdaughters over and our day was filled with Rock Band playing (them not me) and me serving up an awesome do it yourself sub buffet, and for dinner a "season your own chicken wing" buffet. The kids really liked picking their own flavors and the honey soy sauce creation was the favorite for me and Ashley. The other girls lack creativity and adventure and just stuck to BBQ sauce.

We watched the movie Beneath the Blue while we did lunch. The movie has crummy reviews and it is a cheesy predictable movie, but the kids all loved it and wouldn't stop talking about it during and after watching. It has to do with dolphins and young love or something like that.

After dinner we watched The Smurfs and chowed down on some fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, I forgot how great those things are right out of the oven! The Smurfs was the winning choice of the day. All the kids were excited to watch it and Hailey even sat still for most of it, taking short breaks to beat the dog and the other kids with her princess wand. ( I didn't give her that thing...)

I even got a great present from Grandma Sally. A tshirt and kitty from The Big Bang Theory :) I'd post pictures but I'm too lazy right now, if you're on my facebook you've already seen them as most of the people I care to share my real life with are on there anyhow.

I ended my day off with a bubble bath, a good book (thanks again Grandma Sally) and am now going to try and get a little WOW time in before bed. Night everyone and thanks for those of you who love me no matter what :)

The Perfect Housewife

I recently recorded with a new podcast this week. I had tried to work my whole day out so that the kids would be asleep and I'd have some time for a glass of wine and my favorite show to unwind before recording. But instead I had one of those long stressful days that I am trying to get used to since my husband has been gone. The baby is teething and not napping, my oldest is on strike from cleaning her room and angry at me for taking away her video games so she was giving me extra attitude that day. In addition to all that I was mad about some other things and royally pissed at my Astronomy Lab assignment (what else is new right?).

I may not have been my best on the show, but I'm new and it takes some time to get into a groove, time for people to get to know my personality and for me to know the personality of the others on the show. For the most part being on a new show should be a fun experience. However as soon as you put yourself out there you fall victim to comments and negativity.

Having spent 3 years on SGPink I never knew what it was like to be a new person on a show. I have a whole new respect for every girl we brought on over the years and what they must have gone through. I was nervous, petrified actually of screwing up so I was more abrasive and more Jax than I normally am and it was too much. I rubbed a few people the wrong way and stuck my foot in my mouth which is something I am unfortunately quite good at doing. For the most part, I thought the show was great. You don't realize as you're recording what a show sounds like until it's all put together. It really was a good show.

What I hate though is all the dumb comments you get from people who don't know a thing about you. I know they should never be taken seriously but one just rubbed me wrong:

"As a married women with children, I always put my family above gaming. It’s a hobby for me, it appears to be her JOB!!"

Now I am never going to be housewife of the year, but those who know me know this is the biggest load of crap on the planet. I am a stay at home Mom which you'd think would allow me more time for gaming but in all honesty...it really does not. I will get my AA degree in a couple weeks, a degree I earned while going through a pregnancy, then raising a baby, surviving a huge move for my husband and our FIVE children, and have spent the majority of this semester with a husband who has been too far away to help. I am on the honor roll, as are my children, we have even taken the time over the last couple months to raise a huge chunk of money doing the Breast Cancer walk last month AND the Extra Life fundraiser which benefits sick children. I cook real meals, I have a clean house, and I've spent the last couple days getting crafts and fun meals planned for a weekend sleepover party.

I WISH gaming were my job, I wish I had more time to play. During the daytime I might get a little gaming in, but it's all about the kids. Luckily my kids also love games which means I get to game with them. But to say all I do is game is silly. I've put 8 hours into Saints Row since I got it, and probably barely that much time into Skyrim. I don't get to go out. Gaming is my release, my break from my day once the kids have gone to bed and the toys have been picked up.

I will admit that I screwed up and didn't really portray myself the way I want people to see me. I really am a good person as my friends all know, I'm just not sure why I don't want the whole world to see that me. This has been an eye opener for me, and I know I have some things to work on. I am not perfect, for the most part I'm a big fat screw up, but don't call me a bad mom.

MMO's aren't supposed to be lonely

I've been playing Rift for quite a few months now and I really like the game. For those that don't know what it is, it's a PC game...google it if you want details. I was previously playing WOW which was my very first experience with an online MMO and I really liked it. I was in a good guild with chatty people who were always around to lend a hand.

I'm not having the same experience in Rift. I was lucky when I started WOW to have a good friend from the forums at SarcasticGamer.com to guide me through things and to lead me into the guild with the really cool people. I don't have the same thing in Rift.

So my question is, how does one make friends in an MMO? I'm really not good at it at all.

Last night, had my credit card been within reach I probably would have purchased another month of WOW and started playing again. I really do like the game, I just never have time to play so I let that subscription go in order to play Rift...which I got for free :) But I've only got a couple more "free" months to go on Rift and although I like the game, I am not liking the lonely part of it. I don't want to wander around alone, fighting monsters, riding my demon...er ember...steed around with my feather in my hat and my little doggy companion by my side...alone.

Well at least I have my pets right?

The Relay Race of Life

When did life become so much like a relay race? You start with one task, and hurry to get to the next, and the next, all in an effort to get to the end with everything done and then what? Do you win a prize? No, you wake up and run the race all over again. Sometimes we all need to slow down, to not run the race for just a day, and to enjoy life.

My days are so much like a relay race it's making me sick. Wake up, make coffee, fix breakfast, clean, juggle fussing baby, make lunch, make dinner, clean, fit in time for half-assing my schoolwork, squish in a few minutes of gaming here and there, think about writing articles, working on my podcast, trying to do SOMETHING that makes me feel like me instead of a maid and a housewife and a slave basically.

This is why I think gaming is important for me at least. It's that one time during the day where you can step out of the race and just do things that aren't that important. I like this blog for that too, but again...where's the time? I haven't been gaming very much. It seems like such a frivolous thing to do when there are more important things that "have" to be done.

I'd like to state for the record that in the five minutes I've been working on this blog entry I've had to stop once to answer a phone call for my husband (why they keep calling me I don't know), and a second time to answer the door because the power people are coming out to install a meter. The dog is still barking under her breath at the man who was at the door and if she wakes up the baby during her one nap of the day so help me....

Ahem...

Gaming. I need it, it's my hobby, it's my release and I miss it. I've been trying to game a little more this week, hopping on Rift the last two nights and playing for a couple hours. Funny thing is, it helped knock me out of the fog I've been in for the last couple weeks when I WASN'T gaming. So I guess my point is that it's important to do things you like, or else you're just another zombie housewife going through the motions.

Another thing I love and that makes me happy is the podcast I've been recording for nearly three years at SarcasticGamer.com and now I'm having to let that go. There isn't any time. I've been half-assing it and it's shown, and instead of continuing to not give it the attention it deserves, I've left...and I've killed it in the process. I feel horrible about it, but I just can't keep up with everything. I hope that some day in the future I'll have more time for podcasting, and gaming, and writing, and being JAX :) But for now...I'm so overwhelmed I can't even explain it.

We're set to move in two weeks to our new house and I'm mostly excited about it. I'm not thrilled at the prospect of the moving process and the moving in process. I've got enough on my plate as it is and the added "FUN" of a move is making me want to crawl in a hole with a bottle of Captain Morgan and my laptop and never come out.

So if you can't find me, that's where I'll be...until my next blog.