The high school band's pre-festival concert was on February 17th.  Oh my my... the symphonic band did such a wonderful rendition of "Beautiful Dreamer."  Sigh.  My daughter's friend sent home a tape of it for us, and we are listening to it now.  It was so pretty.  Of course, yes - I cried!   Do you expect less?  (The Symphonic Band got all #1 ratings at festival, by the way!)

I had the flu last week.   I have not had the flu in a while, so that was something different.  I had my sister over for dinner the night before it hit me, and towards evening my hands were just aching something fierce.  "Why do my hands hurt so bad?  Maybe water weight gain for that 'time of the month' perhaps?" I pondered to myself.  The next morning I got up and felt terrible.  By noon I had a 102 fever and was down for the day.   EVERYTHING ached then.  (Plus I started my monthly as if I inflicted it on myself just by thinking about it the day before.)  It was plain terrible.  I can take pain.  This was pain I didn't want to take.  Thank goodness for no puking!    I went to the doctors on Monday, dragging myself there, cursing my husband for not taking me.  I had to wait two hours to get in.  (I was a work in.)   When they called me I was crying like a baby, I hurt so bad.  They did a test for influenza, and I passed with flying colors!  She prescribed antiviral medicine for the flu.  By Tuesday I was able to sit up without keeling over, so I looked up 'flu' on the CDC website.  Michigan is one of the pretty colored red states!   (Not that it made me feel better, but I didn't want to suffer alone and felt comforted by all the red.)

So, I'm better now, but fear I may have suffered some brain damage from the fever.  (I can blame being stupid on fever, can't I?)  I ran into town on my lunch (a bit early) to get steak for dinner tonight. (It's my 25th wedding anniversary, so special meat was required for dinner.)   When I came back at 11, I grabbed my purse and meat out of the car and ran back into work.   At five, I packed up my computer and was rummaging around for my keys in my purse.   I couldn't find them.  I looked on my desk and behind my desk and under my desk.  No keys.  "Oh well," I told Jim, my office mate, "Must have left them in the car."  So I hauled all my stuff to the car, watching the floor for signs of my keys.  When I got out the front door, I heard a car running.   It was MY car running.  My first thought was, "Ah, how sweet, someone started my car for me!"  It is like me to assume that people are basically kind and will surprise you with little things like starting your car when it's snowy and blowing out.  When I stuck my head in the car, however, the first thing that struck me was the fact my full tank was no longer full.  I was 1/4 of a tank lower!   That poor car had been running since 11 a.m.!!   My friend Deb came out of the office, and I told her, "I have left my car running for six hours!    Anyone could have just driven away with it!  It wasn't even locked!"   She laughed, and said, "I noticed it running when I got back from lunch at one, but thought you were just warming it up!"  We laughed at my stupid.    I ran back in the office to get flowers from my desk, and saw Doug.   "Doug, I found my keys....in my car...and the car was running....since eleven this morning!"  He roared.  "It should have dawned on me when I looked out the window and your car was the only one in the parking lot without snow on it!"   he laughed.  Sigh.  But maybe it's not just me, and I can prove it in the next paragraph.  (It's a plot to make all the women in my family stupid - something viral in the water supply, perhaps.)

March 27, 2005 - Happy Easter!  Easter at my house over the years usually means a major appliance will explode, malfunction, and/or just quit working.   We are learning to anticipate it with the glee of children instead of the fear of a home owner.  Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't.  We pretend we don't care and flip our hair and laugh, and sniff the air on occasion for the smell of burning wires.

My daughter is going to the prom this year.  She has a nice boyfriend who treats her like a queen.  He opens doors for her and waits for her and sits with her at lunch and has taken her on several dates and he still comes back - so that is a good sign.  He's come over to the house and the cats have profusely shed on him and Odie has shared his smell with him and he still comes back.  He plays with her little brother and STILL comes back!  (When I was little, that was a sure way of getting rid of my sister's boyfriends.  We'd bug them and bug them until the boy would play with us or take us somewhere.  Since I don't remember my parents ever telling us to leave my sister and her friends alone, I am sure they used my brother and I as weapons to prevent any hanky panky from taking place.   There was one of her male friends who sat down and played tinker toys with us and built us an amusement park out of TINKER TOYS!  A working ferris wheel!  I was in love with that boyfriend.  I can't remember if we ever saw him again or not...BUT the ferris wheel was just amazing.)

But I digress...I am not a 'girly' girl and shopping for prom dresses has been one of the topics at therapy for me over the years.  (When I went to the prom, I got my dress for 35 dollars at a local 'K-Mart' type store called Zayres.  It was the first dress I found in my size.   There was no official shopping to the process.  It fits, I can afford it - sold!)  I have dreaded this day since the final push and the doctor announced it was a girl.  I don't do makeup, I don't do hair - how in the world was I going to shop for a prom dress?  When my daughter found out she was going to the prom, she danced and hopped around in tribal sort of way, then when she exhausted herself, she panted, "Mom, you have to call Suzi."

Suzi is a family friend who has been like a Mom to my daughter.  Suzi's Mom, Sharon, babysat Chelsea when she was little, so she was like a Mom, too.  They agreed to come to help with the prom dress process.  (Thank the Lord!) I was dreading the shopping.  I figured we'd be out for days in search of a prom dress.  I was shaking from fear.  Suzi and Sharon and Suzi's daughter and I and my love struck daughter met at a local bridal shop to start our search.  I looked through rack after rack and nothing looked right.  I didn't find any that looked good.  I was clueless.  I looked at the pretty colors and shiny sequins, and the others did the work.  Each picked out a favorite and we hustled my daughter into a changing room to start the process.  After she got each one on, she would go out and show the girls.  Opinions were expressed, then we went to the next one.  Out of five, two were favorites.  So they went on again, and the votes came in.  When she put on the maroon dress for a last vote, I told her to take her hair down.  When she was shaking out her hair, I saw the whole scene in slow motion.  This was MY daughter?  She looked so lovely.  I was dumbstruck.  We picked the maroon one that showed her chest without her chest actually falling out all over.  It was a lovely dress without being slutty.  I was still in shock from the beauty of my own child.  As Sharon said, it was enchanted - fairy like.  Checking out and paying for the dress brought me back to reality, however.  Ouch.  We were done in an hour, however.  An hour!  And all these years I had worried for nothing.  Thank you Suzi and Sharon!!!

My son wanted have his shoes laced in a fancy manner.  "Go on line and find out how to do it, Mom!" he commanded one night.  "I want them straight laced."  Silly me!  I had no idea there was a science to lacing shoes.  So after my son went to bed, I did get on the internet and search on ways to lace shoes.  There are page after page dedicated to this fine art!  Who knew?  The page I chose had wonderful illustrations on how to do various lacing.  I printed out the straight across diagrams, and spent ten minutes lacing my sons shoes, straight across.  He was thrilled when he woke up.  I was escalated to "awesome" on the Mom chart for the morning.  You can find everything you ever wanted to know about anything on the world wide web...

Speaking of which - my browser was hijacked a few weekends ago.  My daughter was looking up prom hair styles on the internet, when a window popped up that stated "Norton Anti Virus has detected a trojan - Clean it?"  When my daughter told me this the first time, I said, "Yes!  Clean it!"  We have Norton as an antiviral tool, so I didn't even bat an eye.  When my daughter said it again - another window had popped up, I came to look.  It looked legal, so this time I clicked the "clean" button.   When the third one popped up, I finally got my head out of my darker lower regions and realized something wasn't right.  But by then, the damage was done.

When the first window popped up, I should have had her immediately sign off the internet and I should have run a virus scan right then.  Now that I look at things, the window resembled an older version of Norton and not the version I have installed.  I should have known!  What was happening each time we clicked the 'clean it' button was spyware and malware was being installed on the PC.  They are clever in the way they get on your PC.  Evil people with nothing better to do than mess with YOUR stuff!  To me, this was like a date rape.  You felt comfortable with the whole thing until it went terribly wrong...

It took me 30 hours to fix the whole mess.  I was worried that I would have to reload the whole PC.  I researched this issue and downloaded the beta version of Microsoft Anti Spyware tool and downloaded the AdAware tool from Lavasoft.  Finally, I got the combination right on how to clean it all but it took hours.  (You have to scan in safe mode after turning off restore points, etc.)  There were three horrible ones on my machine at first, and getting rid of them took the longest.  Then after those were removed, there were 15 more on my machine - no doubt a product of removing the others.  It went on and on...   I see no difference in a breaking and entering of the home and this PC hijacking.   It should be punishable by cutting off the fingers of the programmers that wrote the malware.  Doesn't seem fair that anyone can hack into a PC worth several thousand dollars and wreck it.  Would we let someone take a hammer to the windows of our cars without some form of legal ramifications?

My daughter is taking the ACT test in April.  I forced her to fill out the paperwork and get it in.  She put it off and we were late.  (Had to pay another 17 dollars for the 'late' part.)   We got back her 'ticket' to take the test, and it was in Johannesburg!  (That is approximately four and a half hours from my house.)  It wasn't until we pushed and questioned and wondered at the location that my daughter found she had PICKED Johannesburg as a choice for test centers!  "I thought it was near here!" she said.   I hope there is not a geographic test portion on that test for she will be in dire straights.  After a phone call and a very nice lady in Iowa at the ACT headquarters, we were able to switch it from clear across the state to just down the road.  I felt much better.  Sigh.  She has always had an issue with directions.  She's got lost several times coming and going to events in the dark.  Thank goodness for cell phones. 

Mind you, in my day there were no cell phones, so when my friend Vickie and I got lost driving around one night looking for a party out in the boondocks, we finally decided to call the police from a pay phone just as the sun was rising and we were pondering what type of punishment awaited us at home.  Convincing the dispatcher that we were not drunk but just terribly lost and for reference there was a large plastic cow outside of a Harding's Market staring at us and we'd really appreciate some directions was very challenging.

April 10, 2005 - Sunday Morning at 6:20 a.m.  It's quiet.  I like that.  Everyone is still in bed.  Quiet.  The laundry process makes nice white noise in the background.  Soothing.  Ahhhhhhh.  I had a 'coma' day yesterday, and was worthless.  When I wasn't sleeping, I was thinking about sleeping.   So I pretty much slept all day.  I slept right up until 3 a.m. this morning, and then my brain and body decided that I had been asleep WAY too long and I had dreamed about all I was going to dream in any give 24 hour period, and my body and brain teamed up together to ask if I would be so kind as to get my fat butt out of bed and move around some for they would both be very grateful as most of my blood had pooled to one side and the organs there were beginning to protest...

So I got up at three a.m.   I sat on the toilet for a good half hour, just sitting there getting my bearings.   The cats were fighting and fur was flying so I let them all out to romp.  I started a load of laundry and folded one that was in the dryer, waiting for some kind soul to come along and fold.  I did the dishes that the family was so kind to leave for me the night before.  I made a pot of coffee and have been sipping on that since three a.m.  Now there is an underlying electric feel to my skin from the caffeine buzz, and I had a dire need to clean large objects.  Twitch. 

My daughter took the ACT yesterday.  She was so freaked out by the whole ordeal prior to the test.  You can take practice tests on line at that ACT.org site, and she did this.  She did the paper tests they send with the package.  She tested and tested herself.  She is convinced she is doomed.  She will fail miserably.  She asked me to rub her neck last night, and she was so knotted up muscle wise, I'm surprised she could see straight!   She is a smart kid, book wise.  I have no fear she will do just fine on the ACT.  If she doesn't, she can retake it.  We put no pressure on her as parents to do well or not do well.  This one was 'all her' as it were.  She made if much more difficult that it should have been.  I hope she can relax a bit now.   (Which I doubt, since she put off a ton of homework all spring break to concentrate on the ACTs!)  It doesn't help that she's all twitterpated over a boy, and thinks of him non-stop.  Ah, young love.  Book wise she's smart, but in real life she's the person they make all the 'blonde' jokes about, I swear.  I sent her to the bank yesterday, to get some money to buy dinner with, and when she came back, she proclaimed, "I swear I'm a ditz sometimes!  I was born without common sense, Mom!"   After hearing this, all I could picture was that she fell prey to a con man at the ATM and withdrew all my money to donate to some cause she deemed worthy at the time, or she in fact drove through the bank, taking the term "drive through" way too far...

She didn't drive through the bank or give away my eager checking balance.  She did, however, go to a totally unrelated bank to the one I instructed her to go to, so there was a 2.00 charge for the transaction.   There are three banks in my town.   She has gone to my bank with me hundreds of times, so why would I assume she would have a clue where to go when sent out alone?  Smile.  Oh well, she made it back alive, and that is all that counts.

My 12 year old son is in full swing puberty hyperdrive.  His voice is cracking and he's growing taller by the second.  His attitude has been terrible, pushing people and barking at them as if he was one phase away from becoming the incredible hulk.  His sister has been forced (so she claims) to throw him to the floor more than once and sit on him to control his "puberty boy" actions.  (His outbursts, I notice, usually follow a taunting by his sister.  Coincidence?  I think not.)  She instigates a lot by harassing the poor boy with, "Your voice is changing!  Your voice is changing!   You have like a three octave range!" or "You stink like a puberty boy!"  She is not making it any easier for him, to be sure.  He does get back at her from time to time.  "At least I know where Mom banks!" he shouted at her while she was sitting on him last night.  My favorite is, "I may be puberty boy now, but that will pass.  Your stupid goes on and on for ever..."   Smile.  I love my family.

I know (logically) that it's just a temporary thing.  I know (logically) that I don't have to give in to these emotions swirling inside my head because they are just there due to chemical processes that lose all sense of direction and purpose this time of the month, but man...I could just fall to the floor and cry yet at the same time I could kick some stupid person in the lower extremes until they changed genders. 

I am sad and feel so utterly alone and tired.  I am mad and feel very hateful at the inbred 'duh' in the world.   I don't want the T.V. on because the T.V. is stupid and some of the commercials should be shot because they are so asinine.  (If I see the Subway "Crispy Chicken Quesadillas" commercial one more time, I'm going to torch a restaurant!!)   I don't want my kids or my husband to talk because they will eeek insanity out of their mouths tonight.  (Not really, of course, but that is how I feel.) 

I was so angry all day at an incident that happened in our small town.  Two teens beat someone up for no reason.   I won't go into detail lest I form a one woman vigilante group and go kick butts all night until they throw me in jail, but the anger in me...  Violence brings on more violence.  Sigh.  I get upset when people of any age think that doing that sort of thing (killing or kicking or beating people) is acceptable.  You don't have to be a devout Christian or Buddhist or Catholic or Jew or whatever to know THAT IS A BAD THING.   When did basic humans forget to recognize right from wrong?  When did we (as a species) start lacking this in our DNA?  I mean, come on!  When did we as a race forget the concept of morals?  So after spending the day wired from anger, I am now just ready to sob in a heap on the bed until I can't breathe.  I would love to get on a bus (because I'm too tired to drive) and go off into the sunset.   Of course, there would have to be no other idiotic humans on the bus so I wouldn't get far without a driver, now, would I? 

I will be happy when this particular cycle is over.  Normally I am not like this.  I'm quite in love with life during cycles normally.  I get all emotional - ready to pick the world up in my arms like a bunch of flowers and love everyone and everything.  This time I'm dark and sad and gloomy and everyone else is stupid.  Being a girl is stupid, and I'm mad.   (However, I won't go beat up any innocent people!!  Cripes!  Even in my brain altered state of self pity I know that would be a bad thing!)  Sigh.  The best I can muster tonight is guttural grunts and sneers and I don't want you to touch me or look at me but you had better notice I'm suffering or I'll fart in your general direction, boy howdy.  WALK ON GLASS AROUND ME, YOU MERE MORTALS!

Oh, and yes, I would like some cheese with this whine, thank you.

Now, I will quit complaining and go off in search of something coated in chocolate.

Shut up.

Tonight was a most excellent High School band concert.  I only cried once (which is good for me as band music tends to cause my eye sockets to leak excessively with emotion) and that was during a saxophone quartet piece.  They played the Beatles, "When I'm 64" and I was just amazed at the sound coming out of those horns - the harmony!  It was beautiful and harmonic and mesmerizing.  I am so proud.  These are OUR KIDS up on that stage making WONDERFUL MUSIC.  Nights like this make me want to get on my knees and pray to God and thank Him for this talent.  I wonder if those kids even have a clue how many people they touch by playing up there on that stage?  If they don't know now, they will when they are the ones in the audience listening to their own offspring with their eyes leaking excessively.

Stewie the new kitten is now Stewie the awkward teenager.  He has started to insist that he be let out with the Muffy and Taffy when they go on their nightly hunting/pillaging/raiding parties.  (Cats remind me of Vikings, now that I ponder it.)  Muffy and Taffy leave the poor guy as soon as they are out the door for Stewie has no clue what 'stealth' means and they do not want him anywhere near them when they are in pursuit of a mole or mouse.  Stewie lopes across the yard like a buffalo.  You can hear him coming half an acre away.  He creates a one-cat stampede effect.  Things vibrate and dust flies when he is out and about.  He can't decide if he wants to go that way or this way.  Anything blowing in the wind changes his immediate destination plans.  He would be a fine candidate for any Ritalin research projects that might require felines for testing.

Stewie also has no concept of going to the bathroom in or on anything other than store bought kitty litter.   He will have his back legs crossed when I let them all in come morning time.  He will fly to the litter box, knocking over anyone in his way.  Muffy learned years ago to use the kid's sand box as Mother Nature's alternative to kitty litter.   Taffy is more private and civilized about the whole thing, but I'm sure he's not afraid to get his feet dirty if he has to 'go.'  I am tempted to follow Stewie around and SHOW him how to use the great outdoors as a toilet.  If I were a cat, I'd be out spraying tires and digging up any and all loose dirt I could find!  Sigh.  At least the other two cats have finally accepted the fact Stewie is here to stay - that is, until they can get him alone, grow tall enough to reach the knives, and happen to grow opposable thumbs to grip said knives.

My husband is unemployed again.   I don't worry about it.  It will be fine.  My oldest son is unemployed as well.  I don't worry about it.  It will be fine.  My son comes over a lot now to be fed, and it is good to see him.  Actually, I am honored he feels like he can come over and be with us when times are tough.  However, having my husband home ALL THE TIME has taught me patience.  (Although I figured I had the whole "patience" thing down pat after bearing three children via natural childbirth, but apparently there is more to learn on this subject.)  Worse comes to worse, I do have opposable thumbs and I can reach the knives...

May 22, 2005 - I went to call Stewie into the house Friday morning so I could go to work and not worry that he was off being stupid somewhere, and found him and a little squirrel just hanging out under my car.  They were not fighting.  They didn't seem afraid of each other.  They were just hanging out together.  Stewie came in the house when called, and the squirrel just sort of hopped away slowly.  I turned to my husband and gushed, "Awww, Stewie has a squirrel friend!  Our little boy is growing up!"

At work, my friend Mike and I were talking ... he just bought 30 trees to plant on his new property.  He has 13 or so planted by the time his wife got home, and she offered to help.  He told her she could dig a few holes while he took a break.  She got the shovel and jumped on said shovel, and the shovel only went into the ground an inch or so.  She continued to jump on the shovel and eventually managed to get a wee divot of sod out of the ground.   (Mike's wife is a beautiful woman, but tiny.  Maybe 100 lbs. heavy if even that.)  Mike decided he would dig the holes and move in the trees and she would be the official filler-inner and packer-downer of the dirt.  Mike and I laughed and decided that all men need a 'set' of wives in various sizes to perform various functions.   A petite beautiful wife for, um, well, you know....an industrial sized wife like me for the toting and lifting and overall crowd control, and maybe one more in the medium range just to be safe.

My daughter got her ACT test results back.  They were not horrible.  She got a 26.  She could have done better, she could have done worse.  I was very proud of her, to be honest.  A score of 26 is nothing to sneeze at.  Maybe all that angst and studying prior to the test that she put herself through was a good thing.  Now she is heavy into a scrap book project for Humanities class.  They have to do a scrap book that includes pictures for and information about family events, cultural events, national/international events, richest Americans, Presidents, average family income, and other things for EACH year they've been on this earth.  The teachers gave them all the information for this project before spring break in April, mind you.  They had ONE MONTH before the first six years of the scrap book was due.  Of course, my daughter waited until the weekend prior to the first due date to even begin research.   She was up until the wee hours of the morning working on the project.  I felt no pity for her, as she was fully aware of what was expected and what was due.  She dragged out our photo albums and boxes of pictures.  There were piles of photos everywhere in the house.  The scrapbook project has been, to say the least, educational for ALL of us here.  Trying to remember three family events from each year has been a challenge.  She can find out all the other information she needs via the internet or from a book, but family events - she has to rely on the information that was at one time stored in our brains, and is now mixed in with God knows what and where it came from to begin with.  "Mom, you don't date the pictures!  You have to DATE THE PICTURES!" she would cry while going through the picture boxes.  "Who is this?" she'd ask.  (All of my kids look alike when they were small.)  "Um...that has to be your little brother, it's eating Cheerios!" I declared.  (My youngest child was addicted to Cheerios, so that was a valid guess.)  She ended up getting the first six years done after 24 hours of work and crying and sweat and tears.  It was well done when she was done, I must admit.  She can be clever in how she writes and arranges things, but it sucked the life out of her.  I have reserved pity for her - I remember doing things last minute in High School myself, so who was I to judge?  The next six years of the project that was due two weeks later didn't rip her apart as badly, but it was still a last minute effort before the due date.  Again the piles of pictures were strewn around and our minds shaken to figure out family events. 

The last six years and the final part of the project are due tomorrow, and the family events part is not as hard this time as I've kept this diary on line since 1999.  (It was a big benefit, to be sure.)   Once the project is officially over, I am bronzing that scrapbook and mounting on the wall.  To be honest, we all had good laughs and cries while sorting through pictures as a family.  We have walked down memory lane, even if in my case I have to trip a few times to get to those memories.  My kids patiently listened to stories from the past and asked questions.  My husband said one night that he's leaned a lot from this project.  (A milestone.  He doesn't admit to learning anything ever.)   I will have to get off of the computer soon so she can put together the final parts of her scrapbook for tomorrow, then it will be over.  I am hoping she gets to sleep tonight by 2 a.m.  As painful as this project seems to have been, I think those teachers are the smartest teachers ever.  It was more than a project, it was a family event.  (I told her she had to use the scrapbook assembly as a family event for this year's pages.) 

I highly suggest to you to keep a small diary if you have small kids, or more than one kid.  Jot in it from time to time about common things and family things.  There will come a time when you will be asked to remember something that has long since burrowed into a brain cell way in the back of your brain and locked the doors.  Oh, and DATE YOUR PICTURES!

May 29, 2005 - I cannot comprehend the passage of time anymore.  It is already the end of May in the year 2005!  When did that happen?  How could it happen?  Wasn't Kennedy just shot?  Didn't we just land on the moon?   Didn't they just rip down the Berlin Wall?  There are mornings I wake up and I know it has to be, oh - let's say 1986 or so at least, but it isn't!!  I feel cheated out of time when these moments happens to me.  Then I wake up some more, have a cup of coffee, take a crap, and I feel better.  Sigh.  Life, aye?

It is the end of May.   Back in my day* we would have been to Lake Michigan by now and sunburned to a crisp.  This year, however, it's very cool.  Example, it is 49 degrees right now.  It won't get that warm today.  We may brush up against 70 degrees.  I believe the water temperature in Lake Michigan is in the 30s.  Odd weather for May in Michigan. 

*My Day - Term used to express a window in the past when I was able go to the beach in a bathing suit and not scare small children or cause adult males to seek professional mental help.

The other night, I had asked my husband to move off of the couch if he hadn't actually congealed with it and put windshield wiper fluid in my car.  (He is currently unemployed and I feel he is obligated by some unwritten law to maintain my car demands, no matter how petty they are since I work and he doesn't and I remind him of this fact at every chance I get.)  He went out to comply with my wishes, then I heard him calling me.  He was shaking his head at my engine.  Under the hood of my car was a huge nest of some sort.  I would have to assume it was created by a squirrel.  It had bright orange and green carpet strands woven in with fur of all all colors.  (Somewhere in the neighborhood, someone has wild colored carpet!)  It was a good sized nest!  Why I didn't smell hair burning when I drove, I have no idea.  I drive that car every day!  When did the critter have time to do such detailed work on a nest?  There was also tons of broken up bird seed all over the engine in little pockets.  My husband blew the engine out with an air hose while I examined the nest.  It looked like a clown's wig and I'm pretty sure I didn't run over a clown - lately.  Given our track record with squirrels and critters in general and the humor I find in dealing with Mother Nature at times, I called out the the kids to admire the nest before I pitched it in the Herby Curby.  We did an engine check to all the cars in the yard (of which there is plenty, mind you.  It's always a party at our house, or so it looks from the road.   There are currently six cars that sit in the yard!  No, I'm not bragging, really.  Every day I pull into the driveway, I think, "Man, look at all those cars!"  According to my husband, it is necessary to have a four wheel drive truck for winter, then he had to have another car just for daily driving.  He has a Camero for ego purposes, and keeps a old Dodge Dart he claims he is going to fix up and has claimed this for several years now, and then there is my daughter's car and my car.    But I digress...)  No other vehicles had nests or signs of occupants.   It's just ME and MY CAR that attract the strange and unusual.  This all took place around seven p.m. at night, and the manifold was still 'hot' to the touch.  How did a squirrel do all this work without getting burned on his little toes?  Don't they sleep?  Cripes.  Someone at work suggested that it was the home of a squirrel that commuted back and forth with me, and the nest in my engine was more or less a mobile home.  The squirrel would hang out in the woods around work all day, then crawl back into my engine around 4:45 to come back home.  It makes sense.  Maybe there are no jobs for squirrels in my yard.  Times are hard, after all.   Now, if I could just get my husband to commute back and forth to work in my engine, life would be grand!

May 31, 2005 - Sunday I was out watering the mole holes and tunnels.   I was spraying them full of water in an effort to even them out, not to find any moles in progress, mind you.  The tunnels and holes are EVERYWHERE in mass quantities in our yard, but there is one spot that is the mole's version of downtown Detroit that bugs me the most.  If you happen to stray over that area, you sink 12 inches before you throw yourself to the ground in the most ungraceful way while wrenching your ankle.   As I was flooding the tunnels, the largest mole I have ever seen in my 44 years of life slid out of one of the tunnels.  It was HUGE.  The feet on it were gigantic!  I screamed for my husband, "I got a BIG ONE!!" and sprayed it with the hose to make it run in circles until he got out and clubbed it in the head.   They can run fast.  Seriously, this one would have put any beanie baby to shame, the size of it.  The cats bring us dead moles all the time as gifts but they would have to bring us two weeks worth to equal this one!  I felt bad after the head crushing, however, so we had a bonfire and gave the mole a proper send off.   All night I thought about this mole.  Guilt filled me.  Then I started feeling guilty about other things.  After several hours of pondering about life, I was racked with guilt over a million thing...how I raised my kids, decisions I had made, things I did do or didn't do, why I wasn't at the right place at the right time.  You name it, I felt guilt about it.  It took me a long time to realize that I had to STOP THINKING.  So, I stopped thinking.  Yes, regrets, I have a few, I admit.   Don't we all?  Sigh.  It has taken me until today to even remotely shake that feeling of guilt over just breathing.  I guess next time a mole slides out of a tunnel I'm flooding, I will just capture it and relocate it into the wild. 

My dear friend Vickie sent me the letter below, showing we all have 'those moments'...

"... I just spent an eternal amount of time on the phone with DirectTV.  All because I wanted to check the weather channel to see if it was "safe" to wash my car after 6 straight days of rain.  Well... the "brain" of the deal, the receiver died a natural but premature death as it were.  Called earlier & "okey dokey - no problem" (says the guy) ordered a new receiver.  It later occurred to me in my state of   afternoon nap/half awake-ness the guy didn't ASK ME which receiver,  the one in the living room (WITH TIVO) or in the bedroom WITHOUT TIVO.  In my infinite wisdom I called back.  SIX "TECHS" later... I have a quasi-logical "work order number" so am in great hopes it's legit.  Bottom line, I never thought to turn the OTHER TV on for my weather update.  In fact I was sitting here now talking to a friend when "bingo!" decided to check weather on-line.  It is now 6:30 PM and I have devoted a day in search of information I deemed so ESSENTIAL earlier in the day that I wasted the whole day.  The only sense I can make of all this is... showers all next week.  Thank God I sat on my butt all day pondering my dilemma rather than washing my new car only to have it get messed up in the a.m. This, for some reason, reminded me of you :) ..."

See, I am not alone.  (Contented sigh...)

To comfort Vickie and all of you out there who have 'brain farts' from time to time, I too had one just on Tuesday.  (I actually have one every thirty seconds, but some are more notable than others.)  I had a doctor's appointment in Kalamazoo.  On the way home, it was terribly busy on the main drag I was on, and I kept watching the side mirrors and out the back mirror like a good driver to make sure all was secure and I wasn't running over any school children.   Every time I looked out the rear view mirror, however, I would panic for a split second.  (A bird had pooped on my back window while I was in the doctor's office and the shape of the pooh looked like an abstract drawing of a man running.)  So every time I glanced back, I would spaz for a second, wondering why someone was running down the street behind me!  Then I would realize it was bird poop and I would sigh and laugh at myself.  Forty seconds later, mind you, I would go through this all over again.   "Oh My God!  Did I run over someone's dog?  Someone is running behind me!"  This went on for almost 10 miles before I decided the best thing to do would be to pull over and clean off the crap from my back window.

There is also the MBWOHWM issue of age vs. wearing skirts.  I am 44 with a hair trigger bladder.  When it is finally known to my brain that it is time to pee, boy howdy, IT'S TIME TO PEE AND NOW!!  I don't know how many times I've barely made it to the bathroom, whipped up my skirt and whipped down my drawers to make JUST it in time.  There are those times, however, that the whipping up of the skirt goes terribly wrong - the whole skirt and straight-line-winds science gets thrown out of balance and the skirt doesn't fully deploy upwards as it should.  Hence,  you sit down to pee and cannot stop the process, only to realize that your skirt is caught underneath you and over the toilet seat between your lower regions and the water.  Sigh. 

"Sandy, your skirt is all wet!  How did that happen?"  

"Oh, I decided to take it off and wash it by hand in the sink for no apparent reason.  I'm a free spirit like that.  If you ever need anything sozzled out, let me know..." 

June 29, 2005 - We got two new puppies.  I had promised the kids they could get a puppy (singular) when they got off for summer vacation.  I had friends looking for a puppy for me.  We got a lead about two available puppies about 20 miles from us.  One male and one female.  Apparently they were German Shepherd mixed with American Bull Dog.  "Awwwwwwww!" we all thought.   I wanted a Shepherd and the kid wanted a puppy.  It was a win-win situation!

So, we went to see the puppies and choose.  We were looking for a female specifically.  (Males tend to have a need to urinate on anything that is not floating in the stratosphere to mark their territory.)  When we got to our intended destination, no one was home and there was a gate up to the driveway.  We decided to wait a while to see if they would come home.   After a few minutes out popped two puppies from under and old car.  They came loping to the gate and then skinnied right under the gate to the road where we were parked.  They were adorable!  My son picked up the male and they immediately bonded into one being.  My daughter played with the girl, who was just what we wanted.  We stayed and played with the puppies for a half hour until someone finally came to the house.  By then, we had fallen in love with BOTH of course.  (That is why God made babies of all kinds the way he did.  If babies came out all fat bellied, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette and spitting, we would not want them and we wouldn't spend hours saying, "Awww, they are so CUTE.")  We ended up taking both puppies.

After having them a week, they had grown at least two inches taller and two pound heavier.  By the time we took them to the vet, they were both 12 lbs. each.  He said we had some big dogs on our hands.   He was pretty sure part of them were American Bulldog.  He estimated their adult weight to be anywhere from 50 to 80 lbs.  Maybe.  Could be more.  Could be less.  He will be able to tell more next visit.  Sigh.  Our house is a very very very small house with three cats in the yard....(Wait, that is a song.)  But seriously - we have three cats and now three dogs (two that will be as big as pack mules in a year.)   The chaos at the house is wonderful.  I honestly love it.  The puppies are smart and potty training is going fairly well.  They know how to 'sit.'  They love us merely because we walk into their line of vision.   This summer will be very exciting to say the least.  .

I cannot comprehend time anymore.  July 1st already?  Sigh.  Last night my son and I were playing in the pool, and watching the storm clouds way off to our east.  We watched some clouds billow up slowly and create faces as they did.  They changed from an old man with a rabbit on his shoulder to an 18th century Lady of the Court to a man with a large nose and an afro hair style.  Then that batch of clouds just fizzled out.  It was so relaxing and all in 'slow motion' as we paddled around the pool, watching.  Time stood still for that hour or so.  At least it felt like it and that felt good.   Sigh.

Tonight we went to a concert in the park in our town.  "9th Street Bridge" played.  They were very good.  I was sad that only 20 people or so turned out, however.  If we're going to have concerts in the park, shouldn't people support it and come to those concerts?   It was fun, nonetheless.  The group did a fine job. 

I had an issue with ages tonight.  The police officer walking around looked to be 12 years old.  The singers in the band looked to be 18 years old.  To my kids they looked 20+, so I think that proves my age is, well ... getting older.  One of the down sides of getting older is the fact that everyone younger looks TOO YOUNG.  There are benefits to getting older however and the kids are lucky that the band didn't play something that made me get up and dance, because I would have.  Older people realize that if the mood strikes them to dance, they DANCE. 

July 2, 2005 - Something important to remember... Anywhere you don't have to wear a bra is like taking a mini-vacation!

This morning I walked out to get coffee and the puppies were eating one of my (only pair) of work shoes.  I scolded them and salvaged what I could, but inside I was laughing.  Five minutes later, they ran past with one of my husband's slippers.  After that scolding, I didn't pay much attention to them until they came tumbling by with their collars in their mouths, removed and ready for an exciting game of collar tug-of-war.  After that uprising was put down, I went about my morning business, only to find them behind the lazy boy chair (I  specify 'chair' here so you wouldn't think I was talking about my husband) taking the laces out of my daughter's tennis shoes.  Mind you, I'm still laughing in my head about this - but not out loud.  I don't want them to think bad behavior amuses me, but it does to no end.

My friend Esther sent me a little ditty that went something like this ...  "Some people are like Slinkies...not really good for anything, but you can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs."  I did so enjoy that one!

They predict rain ONLY for the 4th of July here.  I hope it doesn't rain on the parade my daughter marches in.  The mosquitoes have been so bad, I suppose I wouldn't miss sitting out in the dark watching fire works, getting consumed slowly by bugs, but don't rain on my parade!!  I get all misty eyed and patriotic and all, then I get sad because I think about how we Americans really got this land.  Big Sigh.  Can't win for losing.

My daughter is having angst lately.   She wants to be with her boyfriend, but he is busy working and it's his summer before college.  His time with her has been limited, and it makes her mad inside and outside.  I remind her that it's "his" last real summer before real life starts.  She needs to back off a bit and give him space.  I know she misses him.   I remember that lust and love and want of being 'in love' and all.  I'm old, but not dead!  Plus she wants a job, and didn't go looking before school was out, so the jobs were all gone.  She is also not really working at it too hard, either.   I have been strapped for cash to give her, and she knows she needs to work.   She wants angst in her life.  I think it is important for all teens to have some, or I think they THINK they need angst.  We give her little reason to have angst.  We're good parents for the most part.  (Disclaimer - note the 'for the most part' statement.  We make mistakes A LOT like any parent.  We say the wrong things and do the wrong things all the time.  As Yoda would say, "Far from perfect, you are.")  I have been nothing but open and honest with her through her life, so I have taken away a lot of what most teens get angst-ed over.  She finds angst to have, such as the times I look in her general direction because I'm daydreaming or I'm looking at something behind her and she will say, "What is THAT look for?   Why are you upset?"  I, of course, then have to explain that I just had gas or I was looking over her shoulder at the truck speeding towards us out of control or the like.  She wants some angst.  I try to give her some for her daily dose requirements, such as leaving a chore lists for the kids on these summer days off, and I try to make some of the chores disgusting and degrading.  I try to give her SOME.   Sigh.  I hope a job pops up for her before the summer is over.  I think that would give her a focus for her energy.

My oldest son got a job through a temp agency, thank goodness!  He is working in an aluminum stamping plant which is terribly hot work, but he is happy to be working.   I was near the end of my rope with worry for him.  Even when your kids are grown up and on their own, you worry for them.  We should see him this weekend some time.  He was over almost every day during his unemployment, so I miss him. 

My husband has had issues again with his, um...well, anus.  He had a fissure up there, but that was pretty well healed up.   (Fissure - where the tissue rips apart and causes painful sitting and standing and pooping.)  They check him every three years anyway, as his father had colon cancer.   (My first one will be this year too - my Mom also had colon cancer.  I cannot wait.)  He went in for a colonoscopy last Wednesday.  This was his second scope.   A colon scope is where they get you all drugged up just to shove a camera up your nether regions and take cool pictures you can bring home and gross your kids out with.   He had to go through the purging of all particles within the day before.   Nothing but a liquid diet before taking the pills that blow out what didn't come out naturally.  He sauntered out of the bathroom after nine p.m. asking, "When is the last time we had corn?"  We all laughed while making "oh that is gross" faces.

The procedure went well.  I wandered the hospital a bit.  I got coffee and read my novel while I waited.  He came back into the room fully coherent.  (Last time he was heavily sedated when he came back and woke up every five minutes to tell me a story - the same story - about fifty times.  It was quite comical.  I was so looking forward to that part.)   This time he said he was awake through the whole thing and got to watch the camera's progress on the T.V.  Sigh.  I guess I can't have everything I want all the time.  I'll have to settle for drugging his food, I guess.

July 24, 2005 - There is an excessive heat advisory around our parts.   Please check on elderly relatives to see if they are staying cool!  If you know any homeless people nearby, wouldn't hurt to check on them, too.  (Let's face it, most of us are only one paycheck away from being homeless, so have a heart, folks.)

People ask, "Why don't you update the page more?"   I say, "I just did update the page!"  Or so I thought.   I got up this fine Sunday morning and decided to update the page, and see it was July 2nd last I did.  I told you all before, the concept of time eludes me.  Time rushes by at such a rate that I guess I've chosen to ignore it.   Time possibly can't go fast if I, the great and powerful  Sandy, does not acknowledge the fact. 

I understand time when it comes to, let's say, the bathroom 'time.'  Someone is in the only bathroom and I have to go.  Time just crawls by then, forcing me to yell, "What are you, camping in there?" ... Or coffee 'time.'   I want coffee and I want it now but the dripping process is taking a century.  (Why I'm in such a rush for coffee, I'll never know as it just leads to the process mentioned about the bathroom.)  I am perplexed at this concept of time issue and it worries me sometimes.  Does everyone go through this?  I am not worried about speeding to my death at the speed of light, I am just worried about dealing with day to day 'time' concepts. 

I have on the other hand tried very hard lately to make each weekend feel like it lasts forever, because work is sucking the life out of my brain and I need more than two days off.  The project "weekend vacation in my mind" had worked well.  I have managed to slow down time for two days a week.  I feel like I've been off of work for a week every weekend mostly sort of. 

Yesterday I slept most of the day away, however, so that doesn't count.  Sometimes I need more than a vacation, I need a complete shut down and reboot.  I was caught in a dream about my oldest son that I couldn't escape.  Once I was finally able to slip the bonds of sleep, I got up and called him and left him a voice mail about being worried about him.  He called right back and asked me "how did I know already?"  I said, "Know what already?"  He was being evicted from his apartment for late payments!!   Good Lord!  (My dream was about his friends calling me and telling me his car was abandoned at a fast food place and no one had seen him for two days, so they thought they had better tell me finally, well duh, so I spent all my dream time searching for my son and wondering why the detectives wouldn't help me more and during this search I found out he he apparently had a gay lover plus a girlfriend I never knew about and it would have made a grand movie of the week all in all.)  I am glad my dream didn't turn out to be true, but I am sad for my son losing his apartment.  He was late paying rent several times while he was unemployed, and the contract for his apartment states that they can evict you after three late payments.  Sigh.  I am glad my mother instincts are still intact, although they are way off on the problem.  He spent the night here last night until he can figure out what he is going to do.  Sigh again.  I wish he had said something when he had issues with rent, but it's over and done and he's not missing, I know right where he is, thank God!  Now, time goes on again.  This is a new day, Scarlet. 

Apparently my husband pondered this all night himself, the issue of our oldest son, for he is now up and wandering around and muttering that he's just 'wondering' about things.  He has a hard time accepting kids as 'kids' even though he did the same exact thing when he was their age and it would be safe to say he did WORSE things.  He ponders things inside and stews on them too long.  He should confront them when they hit him, in my opinion.  We all process life in a different manner, I suppose.  My husband actually left the house the other day for hours and hours to drive up north with his brother.  He has not left the house since he became unemployed in April.  He doesn't have many friends, so he has just been HERE all the TIME, twenty four hours a day.  Always.  ALWAYS.  I was so thrilled he was gone!  I was even happy to see him when they finally got back.   (He and his brother has been working on a car for his brother's youngest son.   They have put a motor from my nephew's car into a body of a car they found down here.  They have spent hours and hours and days and days on this thing, and they can't get it to start.)  Since his brother lives so far north, he stays down here sometimes to save money on gas.  Anything that could go wrong with the car has gone wrong with the car.  Sigh.

The puppies are keeping us entertained on a daily basis.  They are three months old now, and their bladder and bowel habits are maturing, and they can make it outside most of the time and my carpet thanks them.  Kia the female will actually head to the door and bop it with her head.   "Let me out, NOW!"  They are early morning poopers, so they have to go any time between 3:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., depending when they first wake up.  I find this enjoyable to be half asleep dragging puppies into the yard in my jammies because they have to go but they are afraid of the dark.  This morning they each took turns crapping exactly one inch away from the cement slab we like to call a porch and then running back in to the house so they didn't have to wander out of the circle of light from the door.  (I say they are early morning poopers, but anyone who have had puppies know they poop constantly all day long.  The first round starts in early morning.)   They are going to be wonderful watch dogs.  They bark at thunder and when they hear loud cars going by.  They barked like crazed lunatics this morning when there was a strange dog outside barking at Muffy the cat.  (Muffy the cat got rid of the strange dog with no problem on his own being the watch cat that he is,  but it's nice to be alerted to the fact by the puppies.)  I adore the puppies.  The vet said on Thursday that he thinks they will not get much bigger than 50 lbs. or so now that they are older and he can sort of tell.  That was a relief to know.  I was thinking if they got the size of small ponies, what would we do in this small house!?  Kia weighed in at 16 lbs. and Jake weighed in at 22 lbs. on Thursday.  Just a month ago they were both 12 lbs.  Kia is cautious and stands back from new things and people she sees until she sees we are good with that person or thing.  Jake, on the other hand, will meander right up to them with his little butt a wagging and greet them.   The three cats and the puppies have all come to a peace treaty of sorts.  The puppies will only lay on them and crush them and lick the crap out of them when the cats give them permission to do that now.  Even Stewie has come to learn that puppies love to play, and he loves to play, and what better thing to play with than a live puppy that will scream with pain when you claw them?  Days are never boring here.   Smile. 

It is one week until my daughter leaves for her last marching band camp of her high school career.  Sigh.  She will be 18 this year!  She was 12 when I started this on line diary.  (Where did the time go?  Don't ask me, I'm not speaking to time right now.)  She also starts work at McDonalds this week.  Finally, a job!   Thank you, Lord!!  I could use the help with the money thing right now.   Since she is in band and band takes up tons of time during the school year, I've never forced the job issue.  She is old enough now, however, to deal with school work and band and work work, I think.  I hope.  She had brains, and I want her to GO TO COLLEGE and get a degree in something she enjoys.  I don't want her to do what I did, quit college that was paid for for gosh sakes because I couldn't live without my boyfriend and the big college scared me to death - waaa waaaaa - and then get pregnant and married and, well, you get the picture.  (I do NOT regret my babies, mind you.   I love my kids with the white hot intensity of a 1000 suns!)  I want her to experience life a bit before settling down.  There is so much in the world to learn and see and do before you focus solely on a family and marriage, etc.  She went to the Verve Pipe concert in Kalamazoo last night with her boyfriend.  They were not supposed to play until midnight.  We trust her boyfriend and we trust her, so we were not worried, really.  (OK, Dad was worried.  He's a male too, after all, and she is his only daughter, so the hair on his neck raises a lot when it comes to other males.)   We gave her a 3 a.m. curfew as they didn't leave until 11 p.m. and I assume she is home now, as her purse is back where it normally goes and her shoes are here.  My oldest son said that when he woke up at three a.m., that her stuff was back.  (Even if it wasn't, I know my kids well enough to know that they would cover each other with their own bodies on a grenade if the need came up.)  Smile.  I have to remember my youth.  I did some odd and dangerous things, although they didn't seem dangerous to me then.  My friend Vickie and I took many chances at that age, and we survived.   I know my daughter isn't doing anything NEAR what Vickie and I used to do, so I don't panic too much.  It stormed all night though, and I watch the lightening through my bedroom window until I fell asleep, so I doubt they got to see the concert.   I will have to ask her when she wakes up.  The Verve Pipe would be a good concert, I hope they did play.

My daughter is officially at her last Band Camp of her High School career.  She left Sunday after several days of us each PMS'ing at the same time which anyone will tell you can be a volatile situation.   I was almost relieved to see her go this time.  We needed time away from each other.  Friday night after I fell asleep on the floor with the dogs (because work was horrible and I can't keep up half the time and my daughter had not done her chores like I asked her to and had not even started packing for camp and my husband forgot to make dinner as he had promised to and I went outside to cry because, after all, I am not SUPERWOMAN and I can't do it all by myself and why do I have to suffer so?... well, you get the idea) I heard my husband counseling my youngest son on the home front situation.   "You have two women who are nearing their "time of the month" at the same time.  Times like these, Son, we best just do what we are supposed to do and then do what we assume they want us to do and then do anything else we see that needs doing to cover our rear ends and if we are not doing anything at all, just go outside..."  Had I not been mired in a bout of mentally self imposed pity on the floor, I would have laughed at that. 

An older couple stopped Sunday to take pictures of the family of sandhill cranes that hang here.  They asked if we raised them.  We just explained that they 'hang out' and eat 40 lbs. of bird food a week and make a lot of noise and stuff.  They were fascinated by them.  We got pictures of the cranes for them with their camera which made them happy and off they drove. 

Things are working out OK with my oldest son living here.  He has actually been a big help with chores and playing with his little brother and the like.  We have an issue, however, with clothes.   When my daughter does fold laundry and put it away (do you sense last week's tension?) she will put my son's underwear in my husband's drawer.  Same brand, but there is a size difference to them.  A noticeable size difference.   So, my husband will go to get dressed and attempt to put on underwear that will only get as far as his upper ankles and scream, "Can't people do anything right around here?  This isn't my underwear!!"  My husband was lamenting about the skivy situation later during after meal conversation, and my youngest son turned to his sister and said, "Yeah, Stupid!  Don't you know that the Super-Atomic-Extra-Large ones with holes in the rear are Dad's!  Geez Cripes!   Can't you do anything right?"  That still makes me burst out laughing when I think of it.  Out of the mouth of babes...

My family just reminded me I have to get up early and get to work by 5:30 the rest of the week to train people to cover for me while I'm on vacation next week.  I had forgotten.  I guess I'd better head to bed.  The Pamprin is kicking ... look at all the pretty colors ....

August 12, 2005 -  OK, so I'm on vacation this week.  It has been an eventful week to say the least.  Normally I would do the 'na na na naaaaaa naaa" dance to imply to all that I'm on vacation and you are not, but we didn't have any plans, so I had no need to do the "na na" dance. 

The puppies have been so amusing.  When Jake sees you for the first time in the morning, or whe you walk out of the bathroom after a quick urination, or if you appear in the room again after walking out, he walks like Steve Martin did when he played "A Wild and Crazy Guy" - his tail is going so hard his whole rump flings itself from the left to the right.   Unconditional doggie love.  The best.

Vacation started last Saturday when we went up to get my daughter from band camp.  They are lucky enough to go to camp near Petoskey, Michigan at Boyne Valley Lodge.  The show was wonderful.  I am always amazed how they start out not even seeing their drill and then when you pick them up they are doing a real marching show.  The music this year is from "The Lion King."  You know me, normally I'm a blubbering idiot when band music plays, but I was so proud of me holding it all together this time.  I did OK up until they played the "Circle of Life" reprise, then I fell apart.  "My baby is a senior this year!"  (sob sob)  "She is going to be 18!"   (weep weep)  "My only daughter's last year in high school marching band!"  (gurgle sniff).  They did a fine job on the whole show, and I can't wait until it's polished for the football games.  Sigh.

We went to dinner in Petoskey before coming home.  Every five minutes my daughter would grab her face in shock and say, "Can you believe I'm going to be 18 in a few weeks?"  That, of course, would make me cry.  I couldn't talk to my daughter on the way home without starting to cry.  (Being a parent can really make you aware of the fact that you put your own parents through sheer hell without really knowing it.  If they were still alive, I would be apologizing profusely to them every five minutes.)  I thought the second kid out of the nest would be easier, but it has not been.  Dealing with a daughter is totally different than dealing with a son.  (However, with child #3...I have the Winnebago already rented for Graduation Day, 2011.  It will be idling with the air conditioner on waiting to take me away like Calgon as soon as his graduation party is over...)

So that was the weekend.   On Monday a terrible bottleneck of issues erupted at work that I had not instructed anyone to handle.  I was mad at first because they were mad at me for not telling them how to handle it.  It was an issue that doesn't happen often, so telling anyone about it completely skipped my mind.  The next day, however, after sleeping on it, it dawned on me WE ALL need to cross train better and document better, etc.  I felt better after that.  Instead of getting upset, it will be a tool to make things work smoother in the long run.  I have not dialed up since to work, which has been a deliciously evil pleasure.  I wish I could have slept in on this vacation, but with two new puppies who only know how to and poop and eat and that breakfast at 5:30 a.m.   No exceptions to the rule.  If I didn't wake up at their initial whining, they would stick their tongues up into my nose to wake me up. 

Tuesday I thought I had an infection in my soft tissue near a recently removed cyst on the back of my head.  I get 'wens' or cysts on my head that I have removed when they get big and put pressure on my brain.  So naturally, the pain and swelling on the back of my head made me think I had an infection.  (I had a soft tissue infection under my scalp once that was so painful I had to have prescription pain medicine plus antibiotics.  Once you have one of those things you get paranoid about any scalp pain and just assume you are one day away from dying from massive brain pus explosion.)  After getting into the doctor's office, she told me it was just the nerve that was inflamed near another cyst that was forming under where one was just removed, so if I massage it it would feel better in a day or two.  (It does feel much better.)  However, my blood pressure was 169 over 101 or something like that when the nurse first took it.  When the doctor came in, she asked if I had been school shopping.  We laughed.  They took it twice more, and it was at 167 over 100+ both times.  "What is up with that?" I worried.   I mean - I've had it as high as 150 over 90 something, but never this high!   She put me on blood pressure meds and I have to come back in two weeks.  I cried on the way home.  "I knew I was feeling weird, but why such high blood pressure?  Sure I'm fat as a cow, but MAN..."  I felt much better after a good cry.  It felt good to cry about nothing, really.  I had to admit to myself that I have been severely stressed, even if only subliminally and not openly admitting it, for weeks.  The cry was a good clean cry.  I don't know if the medicine is helping, but I feel better just from knowing I have an issue I have to deal with.   That is something real you can comprehend and do something about. 

Wednesday night I forced the kids to go out with me from 10 p.m. to eleven p.m. and swim in the dark.  This is the week for good viewing of the Perseids meteor showers, and what better way to watch for them than in a nice warm pool of water?  We got to see several "falling stars" (which is a good thing as the weather has gotten cloudy and the best time to see them was this morning from 3 a.m. until dawn, and you couldn't see crap) and a few sightings that were later credited to fire flies.  We came in with very pruned skin from the water but my toenails have never looked cleaner. 

Thursday I took my daughter to get her hair cut yesterday while I had the money.  We parked across the street in town where we go for our hair cuts.  (Terri is a goddess with a pair of scissors!)   I walk fast, so I was the first across the street when I heard her running (or so I thought) behind me.  I turned to tell her not to run in flip flops, but she wasn't running, she was falling in the middle of Main Street.  I just caught the end where she executed a perfect tuck and roll maneuver.  She rolled over onto her back and flailed her arms out right there.  "Get out of the street!  There are cars coming!" I yelled as I ran back to her.  I grabbed her arm and helped her up as I laughed.  (People falling makes me laugh, I'm sorry.  I can't help it.   You're brains could be spattered all over the pavement after you fall, and I will help you but I will most likely be laughing.)  She was laughing but also bleeding from the knee.  "These are not my normal flip flops.  These are the closet flip flops!  (She couldn't find her normal ones as the puppies think they are some alien form of raw hides material and run off with the good flip flops from time to time.)   These are too long in the front and I caught a crack and down I went."   When you start to fall and know you are falling, I admire people who can make the best of it.  As I stated, she did a perfect tuck and roll to minimize bodily damage.   If I had a permanent marker and a piece of paper, I would have written "9.5" on a it and shown it to her for a rating.  We made it to the hair place and asked to use her bathroom to clean out the knee injury.  Both Terri and Michelle were concerned, but after finding out that she was OK, laughed like we were laughing.  General consensus seems to be falling people bring out some primitive humor gene deep within us.  While Terri was cutting her hair, someone came in and Terri said, "I'm almost done here, she just tumbled in for a hair cut."   Secret bursts of laughter followed.

Today, Friday, was the ultimate event of the vacation took place!  I was taking my daughter to pick up her first check from working at McDonalds when on the side of a VERY BUSY road here there stood a baby in a diaper.  A BABY!  I couldn't believe it at first.  I said to my daughter, "Is that a BABY!???"  I answered myself, "That IS a BABY!"  I put on my emergency lights and pulled over right away as to shield the baby from walking directly into the street.  I told my daughter to get out and grab the baby carefully as I tend to make babies scream at the top of their lungs and we didn't need to have him darting into the road.  When she opened the door, he ran right up to the door and climbed in! 

He looked to be 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 or so.  We asked him where he lived and he pointed to the side down the road a bit to a place and said his Dad was there, but he really wanted him Mom, who apparently lived that way down the street as he pointed down the road.  Cars were barreling by at high speeds so I pulled over further and called the police.  What was I supposed to do?   Going door to door asking, "Is this your baby?" didn't seem quite right.   It was a BABY after all on the SIDE OF THE ROAD!  The 911 dispatcher told me to hold tight and they would get us someone out there quick as they could.  By then the little nipper was making himself at home in the car.  He figured out how to roll down the widows with the power button, and he found it hysterical when they went up and down and up and down at a rapid rate of speed.  My daughter was in the back seat with one eye brow up looking at the baby then me.  "I don't want kids..." she murmured.  When I put on the child lock so he couldn't play with the widow, he figured out how to make the radio work and the heater and then there was the hysterically funny volume control to the radio which made my face twitch in odd ways and how funny is it when hot air blasts you in the face at the highest level you can turn the dials?   He was active to say the least. 

The police called back to let me know two cruisers were on their way!  When I first pulled over I felt guilty because I called the police.  I mean, someone was going to get in to trouble for something that has happened to all of us with kids.  (Many of us parents have 'lost' our kid from time to time.  Preferably not near a busy road, but we've all lost track of the little boogers when we turn our back.  But then again, the child was now gone from where ever he lived for over 15 minutes and no one was looking for him....)   After ten minutes of him in the car I was looking in the rear view wondering what was taking the police so long!  He found the lock button after that, and to keep him entertained I took off the child locking features and let him have at it.  My daughter tried to tell him that "if you keep doing that you will break the locks" but it didn't seem to have any effect on him.  Window goes up, locks make a neat sound locking.  Windows go down, lock makes a neat sound unlocking...over and over and over and over....

We asked his name, and couldn't understand him.  (His name sounded exactly the same as when we asked him how old he was.)  He did make it clear he liked throwing rocks at cars.  That we could understand.  We asked if had crossed the road to get here, and he said "Yes!" but he also said "yes" when we asked him anything.  (He had some crusty stuff in his eye like when you first wake up, so I asked if his eye hurt, and he said, "Yes!" and then I asked him if he had pink eye, and he said, "Yes!")  He was not a neglected kid.  He looked healthy and happy and well fed.  He was, to say the least, aware of his surroundings and active.  Very Very Active.  Still no police came.  He spied my Spongebob key chain and screamed, "Something unintelligible something SPONGEBOB!"  I took off the toy part and let him play with it.  He immediately stood up in the passenger seat and turned to the back where my daughter was and pulled up the head rest.  He placed Spongebob under the head rest and smashed the head rest down onto the poor toy.   "I squish Spongebob!" he said proudly.  We tried to talk him out of squishing poor Spongebob, but to no avail (that was until he realized he could pull my daughter's hair through the head rest and smash that.)   He had after burst of hysterical laughter as he pulverized the Spongebob and my daughter's hair. 

We called home to report the situation to the men folk.  "We found a baby!" my daughter shouted to her father over the screaming and laughter of our ward.  "...Yes, a Baby!"   I took the phone to explained the situation.  The child wanted to talk on the phone, so I gave him the phone.  "Hello!" he yelled and then he said "Goodbye" and looked at the phone as if he knew he had to hang it up.  I took the phone as he climbed over me and told my husband I'd update him later and hung up.

Once again I checked my rear view to see if the police were coming.  Finally, the first police car showed up.   I heard an audible sigh of relief coming from myself and my daughter.  The officer came around to my window, and he said, "Found a baby?" and I said, "Yep, found a baby."  He came around to the baby's side of the car.   The baby babbled something at him and he said, "I don't understand baby talk, so let's just start with your I.D., please..." he said to me.  I handed him my license and let him write down the vital information.  He finished that, handed back the license, and asked the little guy where he lived.  He pointed to the building down the road and muttered something about his Dad, then pointed down the street asking for his Mom.  The police man said, "Let's go find your house" and let the baby out of the car.  The baby immediately ran back to the police cruiser and tried to climb in.  "Oh goodness, don't let him in!  There are guns in there!" my daughter and I lamented.  The police man offered the child a stuffed rabbit to keep if he took him to his house.  The baby lead the police man across the street.  The baby stopped in the middle of the road and picked up rocks and lobbed them at a car.  I was worried.  "Maybe you should walk with the officer!" I said to my daughter. 

By then another police man pulled up.  I got out of the car this time and walked up to him.  By now the first officer was down the road chasing the baby as he loped across the yard from one house to the next.  "So you found the baby?" the new officer asked.   "He was standing on the side of the road, just him and his diaper, and what person with a uterus wouldn't pull over when she sees a baby standing by the road!" I practically screamed at him as I grabbed his arm.  (I did not realize how tense I was until this happened.)  "True" he stated matter of fact sort of way, and proceeded to ask for my full name and address and work place and phone numbers.  He then took down my daughter's vital information.  (We could have stolen the child and he would have to cover all bases.)  After he did that, he told us we could go.   "Can you at least call me and tell me if he's OK?"  "Probably not..." he stated in a voice that said, "Go Away Now." 

We drove off.  My daughter and I were in a state of shock, and we assured ourselves we had done the right thing.   When I came back through that way later, there were three police cars at a house and they were all out in the yard.  THREE?  Sigh.  When my husband went in to get something from the hardware store, there was also green State car at the residence.   Oh my.  I don't want them to get into trouble, really.  Now I feel bad sort of but more happy.  We saved a life of a child and found out exactly what every button in my car does.

August 31, 2005 -  I went to dinner tonight with my girl friends.   We had an ice cream dinner at a nearby Dairy Queen type place.  It was so much fun.  I feel so relaxed with those girls and I also feel loved.  We laughed a lot and discussed serious things, too.   I felt so good on the way home as I was admiring how beautiful the corn fields were in the setting sun and how green everything was, then suddenly I was overcome with such grief for the people suffering down South that I burst out crying.  I wondered why the Air Force couldn't drop those meals (like they bombarded Afghanistan with when we went over there to get Bin Laden.)  Couldn't we air drop in MREs to these poor people?  Parachute in crates of juice and water?   I know hundreds of people are trying to get down to those people to help.  I know they are doing their best to stabilize things, but how can one not cry about the whole situation? 

Just like with the recent tsunami, it just feels like we can't help them fast enough.  Helplessness, a crappy feeling. 

I heard on the radio earlier of an Idaho couple and some of their neighbors who were offering to take in some of the homeless families for a few months and get their kids into school there and help them until they could rebuild or start a new life back home, because we all know it will take a long long time to fix things down there.  I thought that was cool.  We've all seen the news...such overwhelming sadness, grief, and fear.  Then the stories about the super human efforts of otherwise normal humans trying to help each other.  I hope we all go to the Red Cross web site and donate or do so through the our Church or School.   I hope when this disaster is just a bad memory for all of us that we continue to help out as we help in a crisis.  Sigh. 

Last week I missed most of the week from having pneumonia!  Ah, to be sick.  I looked through my diary archives and saw that when I get REALLY sick it's always between August - October.  I see a pattern here.  I tried to work on Tuesday, but left early to go to an appointment I made two weeks earlier.  Originally, I was just supposed to go to get my blood pressure rechecked, but ended up getting lung x-rays.  I was happy on the way home only because I had a reason to feel so sick.  I got my prescriptions filled and went home and did a lot of nothing until Saturday.  My blood pressure was lower, 132/98,   but my doctor still didn't like the lower number (diastolic number) and put me on a blood pressure medicine with a diuretic - (Diuretic is actually spelled "Onemustpeeconstantly.")  The next day, I got up and checked a few things at work, read my emails, and then laid back down.  (While working on the computer, I fixed a pot of coffee.  There was just a smidge more left in the can than I normally use for a full pot, so I used it up.  This is critical for you to know later in the story.  There will be a test.)  I can sleep after a pot of coffee with no problem.  Caffeine has never deterred me from a good nap, plus I was so sick on top of that.  After about 15 minutes my right foot started to cramp up.  (We all have charlie horses from time to time, but this was no ordinary charlie horse.)  My right foot started to curl to the left as if it was made of metal and there was a gigantic magnet to the left that it had the hots for.  The pain was unreal.  I could see muscles all up and down my right leg bulging out as if they were tiny Aliens trying to be born.  I bent up to massage my exploding contorted leg when every muscle in the area of my abdomen went into a crap.  Mind you, I already couldn't breath from fluid in my lungs, now there was this pain three times as bad as giving birth taking away what little air I had left!  I tried to call out for my oldest son who was out in the living room, but I couldn't make a noise.  I tried to calm my brain down so my brain could talk to the muscles involved to get them to relax some.  Normally I am really good and mental control of some bodily functions, but with so many signals of pain hitting me at once, my poor old brain couldn't sort out WHICH muscles to 'talk' to.  I took tiny little rapid breaths.  I pleaded with myself to release the muscles.  This went on for some time.  Finally, when the leg let up a bit and the stomach cramping eased back, and I was able to swing out of bed before it started all over again.  Bent over and feeling near death, I got to the bathroom somehow and started filling the tub with hot water.  My son inquired why I was acting like Quasimoto, and I grunted, "Cramp ... no air ... hurt ... ouchies ... arghhh ..." 

I managed to get in the tub and the heat helped the muscles relax FINALLY.  The pain, however, continued.  If I had been kicked by a thousand donkeys, I doubt it would have hurt that much.  As the tub filled with more hot water and my skin started to peel away from my bones from the sheer heat, I could feel muscles twitching and vibrating.  "If I am dying, Dear Lord, could You possibly speed things up a bit?" I pleaded and prayed.  Finally I felt enough strength return to get out of the tub.  I put my jammies on and grabbed the phone and called the doctor.  I assumed one of my new medicines was having a bad side effect.  I left a message on the nurse's phone; "This is me, and I was just there, and I'm dying or something and my whole body is cramping so badly I could be playing Twister with myself and I would feel much better if someone would ask the doctor to speak at my funeral..."  I babbled on a few more minutes and hung up.

The phone rang shortly and the nurse said, "Doc says to drink more water."  That was it.  "Drink more water."  (Apparently I wasn't dying, I was just dehydrated!  Silly me!   Duh.)

So, I drank water like it was, um, water.  I drank and drank and drank and spent most of the day within a six foot radius of the toilet.  Later, I looked up information on the drugs I was taking on the Internet.  Did you know if you are taking diuretics that you shouldn't be drinking too much caffeine and you should probably be drinking a lot more water than you are used to?  I know now.  Learning is a good thing.

My daughter will be 18 years old in just FOURTEEN DAYS, just ask her.  She is so excited. 

Both my youngest son and my daughter like being back to school.  (But this is only day three.  That will change.)  My youngest is still "puberty boy" and his voice has dropped so low that when he talks it reminds me of the sound a car makes when you are trying to turn it over and the battery is just slowly dying.  He tries to communicate with us, but we all have trouble understanding him.  We will look at one another to get hints.   "Did anyone pick up on what he was just saying?" we'll mouth to each other.  More often than not, we remind him that we don't speak "puberty" and he has to tell us again, this time slower and clearer.  He gets very frustrated with us. 

On Tuesday I took my daughter to White Pigeon for a McDonalds Team Member meeting.  Seemed a long way to go for something like that, but who are we to ponder the inner workings of the mind that is McDonalds?  We dropped her off and my youngest son and I drove on down to Indiana.   (Only like 10 miles away, but my youngest had never been to Indiana as he reminded me several times on the trip to White Pigeon.)  We went as far as Middlebury and came back.  He got to see several Amish horse and buggies travelling around.   "It must be nice - they can go where they want and not have to wait to get a license!" he said.  "Well, true, but they have to learn to drive a horse, and they have to feed the horses and get the buggies ready and put the horses away and groom the horses and grow the food to feed the horses and clean up lots of horse poop...." I explained to him.  "OK! OK!  I get it!" he drawled.   (He's still in "puberty boy" mode and drawling his speech out like a drunk Neanderthal man is actually the only way he talks right now.  Sometimes his speech sounds like someone stepping on forty bumble bees at once as well.)   "Still, it would be kind of fun if you didn't have to do all the work, OK!" he stated.

So my son got to 'see' Indiana for twelve minutes before we headed back to Michigan to pick up my daughter.  It's a good thing we started back, for we returned to White Pigeon just as the cell phone rang.   "Mom, come get me.  We're done!" my daughter said.  We picked her up and she said, "I got this bag of cheese crackers and this pen."   "Well worth the drive!" I said.  On the way back, my youngest wanted me to 'tell stories' as we headed north on the highway.  "I love to hear your stories!" he said.  So I told stories.  I told some about their older brother, but concentrated on my daughter, as her birthday was the next day and it seemed appropriate to tell all the little stories that a parent could use to black mail their child as an adult.  When I was finally almost horse from telling stories, my youngest said, "Tell stories of ME now!" 

I thought at least a full three minutes before I said, "I can't think of any!" 

"You forgot about my whole LIFE!?" he lamented. 

I tried hard to think of some, and my daughter helped a bit.   We mentioned his insane love of Cheerios as a child, but it bothered me that I couldn't remember more stories of my youngest!  Why couldn't I?  How can you remember stories of the first two kids without remembering stories of the last one?  I searched and searched my mind.  The only thing I could come up with were the latest funny stories and that didn't make him happy as these were not HISTORY quite yet but recent and EVERYONE knew those stories!! 

When we got home I sat down and still it bothered me.  Why couldn't I remember most of his little fun stories?   Then it hit me.  I turned on the computer and brought up the archives of my web page.  I searched for the words "youngest son" and found TONS of records about things he did that were funny, cute, and memorable.  So for an hour we read through these entries.  "See!"  I told him, "I didn't forget your past, I wrote it down!"  He felt MUCH better.  I explained to him that the stories I told of his brother and his sister were still in my head because I had not written them down.  I was just keeping the stories alive verbally as an oral history.   His history for the most part was in print, hence I didn't store it in the old noggin any more.  He was still very relieved that there was a record of his antics and he went to bed content.  Many hours have been spent in my house telling stories of the past and all of us laughing and my son was happy he was not forgotten.  Maybe I should write down the oral history of the first two kids as well before it's my time to go senile!

That night, I waited until my daughter was asleep to start some projects I had planned for her 18th birt