2009 

Wet Sands Archives 2009 - My Thoughts as I Knew Them, a diary of Sandra Lynn

January 5, 2009 - My wee one turns 16 years old today.  He has walked sideways all weekend to avoid birthday spankings.  (I had to sneak up on the boy to get in a good smack.  He's just too large and strong to take by force anymore...)  I hope he remembers how to walk normal for the return to school this morning after Christmas break because walking sideways down the hall at school, although acceptable, is not practical.  We celebrated his Birthday yesterday, and I made mini-posters to hang in the living room.  (My youngest does several laugh out loud impressions of Rambo and Carol Channing and an older Asian lady...my favorite being Carol Channing.  So the birthday posters that I made up and hung were all pictures of his vocal characters with his face super imposed over them.  Seriously - don't you think he DOES look like Carol Channing?  I asked if he wanted me to send him the picture for his Facebook and he said, "Mom, I doubt if any of my friends know who Carol Channing is!!  The humor would be lost on them...")  

I began this New Year with Don McLean's song "American Pie" stuck in my head and it's been 'playing' in my brain ever since.  I am amazed at how a human remember lyrics like that.  I do remember all those lyrics!  It shocks me that I can remember them when I get forget so many other things.  (I am convinced that if you put anything to catchy music that we'd all remember EVERYTHING we were ever taught.)  Yesterday on the way home from the store I finally heard that song on the radio.  (All these years I just assumed it was the type of song you'd play as a D.J. on a radio station when you had to go to the bathroom, since it ran so long...)  After hearing it on the radio and singing my heart out, the song has finally left my head. 

My daughter and her boyfriend spent New Year's Eve with us.  We watched 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' movies until 11:30 p.m. then watched the ball drop in Times Square, exchanged hugs and kisses, and then my husband and I went to bed and left the kids up playing Monopoly.  I could hear bursts of their conversations while drifting off to sleep, most of it quite humorous, and fell asleep chuckling to myself.  My husband said he got up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and they were still out here playing so he suggested they break it up and head to bed and/or go home.  (After all, there are only so many times you can not go past go and not collect 200 dollars on the way to jail...)

January 8, 2009 - My friend Kathy and I started our New Year with a renewed commitment to treating ourselves better... in a healthy kind of way.  We originally decided to get back to losing weight until it dawned on us that losing weight isn't all of the big picture - sure, we'd like to look all sexy and stuff and be our own local town's Mae West type but what good is that if you feel like dog doo?  It doesn't matter if you look like Twiggy or Jabba the Hut - as long as you are a healthy Jabba - now that is something.  (Of course, being 'healthy' means eating better and eating better will lead to fluffy fat weight loss, so it's a perk nonetheless!)

Kathy and I decided to start our 'new beginning' on January 5th as one cannot realistically say 'JANUARY 1st!" when you know perfectly well you are all going to a party or a Chinese place that has food that needs consuming.  Knowing we were going to start this new adventure, I went completely crazy nuts in food consumption over the two week holiday period.  Even though I didn't bake a lot or cook an over abundance of big meals during the Christmas and New Year weeks, I did eat every thing I could see in the greater tri-state area that wasn't already in someone else's belly.  I would wake up with food hangovers often - as real as any drinking binge would have created.

Monday was the 'beginning' and I have to confess it was like a mini-version of what I think a junkie must go through in rehab...   I had actual withdrawals.  My poor body!  After stuffing all of that junk into myself for two weeks, Monday was the worst day EVER.  I ate as a good girl human should with veggies and fruit and proper meals and plenty of water, etc.   but by the time I got home from work, I was shaking and dizzy.  (Of course, we had a stressful day at work due to a wave of lay-offs and such, but come on...)

Tuesday was a bit better, my body was over the shock of the loss of inbound mass amounts of bread and sugar products.  However, by Wednesday I had GAINED TWO POUNDS.  This seems odd when I've been ever so good.  I reason that I am full of 'crap' literally and should schedule a high colonic or a visit from Roto Rooter, or perhaps I have just been very very bad to my physical self and my body is confused and dazed at this point.  At this point I have not called Roto Rooter and am taking a wait and see approach.  (Mind you, coffee tends to 'move' me just fine, but a two pound gain has to result from residual bowel build up, wouldn't you think?) 

Last night I tried to help my son with Chemistry homework.  Ugh.  (First of all, let me note that he's come a long way since the "F" grade he had after a couple of weeks of school.  After that little experience of losing his laptop for a week, etc - he has carried a high B every since.  The mere fact he asks for help now warms my heart but rips the last three remaining brains cells from my head...)  Ugh.  Molarity?  What the heck is molairty?  I barely lived through Mols in general with my son, now you have to figure the pH and pOH of stuff too?  I had an urge to call my friend Diane's husband, Jeff, as he's a Chemist and would know - but he's in Indiana and it was late.  I also have other friends in other states who are Chemist types, but then it occurred to me WHY these people live in other states - to avoid phone calls from people like me for chemistry homework help.  When my daughter called to tell me about her day during the homework session with my son, I was quite rude and passed her off to her brother to see if she could help him.  (She had this class in High School only a few years ago and aced it - I was hoping she had retained some of the information in her head.)  Alas, the attempt was futile.  She did help him a little more than I did, but he was still baffled.  He finally commiserated with fellow Chem students and found they were as confused as he was and it was collectively decided they will go in today as a united front and demand knowledge. 

And in closing, for those of you who don't know how to figure out the pH of something, as I still don't nor will I ever understand it apparently, here are the steps:  (I include this explanation in case you are ever held at gun point and the only way the gunman will let you live is to calculate the pH of something...)

pH is measured on a logarithmic scale. It is used to tell how concentrated a solution is based on hydrogen ions.  Definition: pH = -log[H+] This says that pH equals the negative log of the concentration of an acid (H+).  For example: Say we have a solution of 0.02M hydrochloric acid and we want to know the pH. pH = -log[H+] = -log[0.02] = 1.7.  This is very acidic because it is close to zero. The pH scale looks similar to this: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 [0 - 6 is acidic 7 is neutral 8 - 14 is basic or alkaline.]  If you're given the pH and not the concentration then: If your pH = 2.3 then, 2.3 = -log[H+] [H+] = 10^-pH = 10^-2.3 = [5.0 x 10^-3M]If your given the pH and not the concentration then: If your pH = 2.3 then, 2.3 = -log[H+] [H+] = 10^-pH = 10^-2.3 = [5.0 x 10^-3M]   *Yes, Aunt Trudy - I copied and pasted this because, really, I have NO CLUE nor do I UNDERSTAND THIS in the least bit nor do I ever intend on understanding it if it can be avoided at all :)   

Clear as mud, right?  Ugh.   After homework sessions like that I feel as if the only thing I'm capable of is running around the living room beating on my chest and flailing my arms while making ape noises as I use a stick to eat termites.

January 12, 2009 - First of all, I will write about my Aunt Sue.  Suzanne (Kauffman) (Glenn) Foschi died on January 8th.  She lived in a town down south of us.  I will quote what I wrote about her in 2001 first:

"My brother found our Aunt Sue, who we have not seen since 1979. She was married to my Uncle Cloyce. After Cloyce died in '82 or so, the family lost touch with her. Just because you lose touch with a person doesn't mean you stop thinking of them. It was good to hear her voice on the phone! Aunt Sue and Uncle Cloyce were married on the day I was born. Aunt Sue's birthday is also the same month as mine. Aunt Sue took my brother and I to Cedar Point when I was in my early teens. First time I rode a roller coaster - The Blue Streak - and the picnic we had there at the park was the first time I found out people actually drink sugar in their iced tea! Hahaha. They told me there was iced tea, so I got a glass. "This isn't ice tea!" I proclaimed! (Mind you - I lived a sheltered life.) Finding out some people drink their tea with stuff in it amazed me. I also spent a week here and there with them at their home. Uncle Cloyce let me mow the lawn with the riding lawn mower! Woo Hoo. Aunt Sue took me to see the movie "Anne of a Thousand Days" at the movie theater. We get to see Aunt Sue in August. I am looking forward to it with a happy heart!!"

We did get to see her at a picnic and catch up in 2001.  I got to tell her exactly how she influenced my life.  It was marvelous.  She had not changed a bit, still the bubbly personality from my youth and a mind as sharp as a whip.  I am mad that I didn't check the Coldwater obituaries soon enough to get to her funeral.  Sigh.  Normally I check obituaries every day!! She only had a short obituary in the paper, and I was sad.  She deserved a big old obituary.  Later in the day when I was talking to my daughter, I told her I wanted more than a paragraph in a newspaper like Aunt Sue got.  I told her all about Aunt Sue again (I'm sure she's heard the stories more than once) and about the adventures I had with her and Uncle Cloyce when I was young.  My daughter said not to worry about a paragraph in the paper - they would give me a send off I would never forget, considering I wouldn't be around to know about it in the first place.

Bye Aunt Sue - thanks for treating me like a little human and not a kid when I was young, and thank you for letting me stay with you guys and giving me confidence in myself during crucial development years. 

We are due for an arctic blast tonight here in Southwest Lower Michigan.  Batten down yer hatches!  Being a close neighbor of Canada as Michigan is, I'm surprised we didn't get blasted sooner, aye?   I believe now is the time to turn on your water pipe's heat tape if you have 'em, aye?  (Aside from my feeble attempt at Canadian stereotypical 'aying', Vickie - do you remember the days of frozen water pipes - ah, memories that sucked in a way but as time goes by, not so much because we were together and we survived!) 

I am trying to 'herd' my fellow High School classmates from High School together on Facebook.  It would be free alternative for a reunion site as opposed to Classmates dot com who charge an arm and a leg, and then once you join it's mostly all advertisements.  Sigh.  Facebook is free - you can upload pictures, etc.  Wish me luck.  I will have to make up postcard type things to hand out when I see local classmates - and I sent a mass email to my out of state classmates that I know about.  I waited way too long to start planning the 30th for this year.  I can see we might end up having a 31st reunion instead due to my laziness!  (Never get tipsy at your 20th reunion and volunteer for ANYTHING!!)  Hahahaha.  If you are a former classmate of mine reading this, please go get a Facebook account and look for me!  (Don't do it at work, however, as I'm in IT myself, and frankly - getting on Facebook at work and or school is a big NO NO from an IT police perspective...and we'd hunt you down and take your first born or puppy and drag your body through the streets behind a horse drawn wagon while people threw stones at you...) 

Oh, and an update on my NEW BEGINNING with food and life this year - I have lost ONLY A POUND so far.  ONLY A POUND.  Oy Vay.  But at least I feel better.  Truly - I feel so much better than stuffing myself full of junk.  **If you are a younger person reading this - DON'T GET FAT AT A YOUNG AGE THINKING YOU'LL LOSE IT WHEN YOU ARE OLDER.  Losing body fat when you are older becomes a challenge as body/belly fat tends to move in and takes over and through some legal loop hole DOES NOT LEAVE when you want it to and as we all know, body fat in the first place is a big evil entity that lives in you and on you and controls your thoughts and is planning on taking over the world as soon as all the body fat can coordinate a time and date and place to meet and congeal together...

January 14, 2009 - I cried a lot today.  Once I started I couldn't stop. 

It all started at a get together at work.   We were celebrating Rod's 30th year at work.  I have worked with Rod since 1979.  Rod has been like a family member to me.  I adore Rod for being Rod.   We don't always see eye to eye - but that is a good friendship - you can agree to disagree. 

When Rod started talking about the old times, of course I had to throw in my two cents since I was part of those old times, and Wyatt was there too - he was part of those old times - it suddenly hit me hard and out of the blue - BAM - an epiphany of sorts... 

I have been struggling for some time to comprehend the passage of my life.  I think I've blogged about it several times.   Life/Time goes by so fast that it's sometimes hard to sort it all out in a human head.  (At least in my human head.)  However, when I was listening to Rod talk and looking at him and then looking at Wyatt sitting there and remembering some of the events Rod was discussing, my brain surged and I swear the whole room could hear it make a loud 'CLICK' sound and right there in front of my eyes I zipped backwards in time.  I could recall events I had forgotten (or chose to forget.)  I backed up all the way through my life to the point where I met Rod in the first place in June of 1979.  I could recall so many emotions, facial expressions, words, conversations, etc.  It happened so fast in my brain - my poor dear brain - all of that fast outpouring of memories...

That flood of memories caused me to break out crying because it was the only way my brain could react to such a burst of whatever it was that happened to me.  I felt like George Bailey in 'It's a Wonderful Life' where he's on the bridge screaming, "Clarence, I want to live again!"   I was so overcome with so many emotions at that second, I could only weep.  I had to get up and leave the room.  I barely got back to my office before I started to outright sob.  (Please note that everyone at work knows I've very "full of life" and am prone to passionate outbursts of tears and hugs and such - so this was not uncommon for me and no one thought it odd that I left crying...)

However, it was WEIRD to ME - and I sobbed and sobbed.  I could honestly say I felt my brain shift a level up or sideways.   It hurt yet it didn't.  It felt good but I was scared.  (Now that I look back, it was a very awesome moment of revelation to me and NO, I don't need to go to the State Hospital and check myself in!)  As I discussed with Jane later, being a girl and all - once you get a good sob on, you tend to cry about everything else as well.   (If you are a male reading this, this honestly does happen to females on occasion.   A female can begin to cry about one thing and end up sucking the air out of a room and collapsing it's ceiling by sobbing about everything else.)  So I sat at my desk and enjoyed the cry and got it out of my system.  I have not had a decent 'girly' type break down kick butt cry in years.  Very cleansing to the soul.  However, now I'm all used up and going to bed.  Hopefully I will sleep like a baby.  I'm way too old for any more epiphanies like that tonight and as a matter of fact I think I'm good on revelations for a month or so...

January 20, 2009  - Temperature (wind chill) this morning is 15 below zero.  Very brisk.  I post this for Vickie and Reva who no doubt MISS temps like this by living in the Southern regions of the country.  Don't you guys miss the crunch of the snow when it's this cold?  Don't you miss the snow in general?  Don't you miss how the top layers of your tongue's skin peel off when you lick a metal pole?  Ah, winter!

Last night I was sitting in my Lazy Boy chair with crumbs of low fat Oreos on my face (which, by the way, I have no CLUE as to how those crumbs got there, and my teeth were blackened with Oreo shrapnel that caused my front teeth to appear nonexistant from a distance if someone had happened to look at me at the time, but I digress...) and I began to ponder to myself about the fact that I had to get my amorphous hind end up and go walk on the treadmill.  There was no reason why I couldn't.  (I decided this mainly because I had to find a way to handle the stress of exam week.  We all know how much I enjoy studying for Chemistry with the wee one.   Last night, I barely made it through review of his art class for that exam let alone Chemistry which rips out my brain and bounces it off the living room walls like so much silly putty...)  Plus, this is the year to take care of ME, so I got up and found my walking shoes and went to face the machine.

The machine doesn't like me.  Several months ago I gave up on The Beast because every time I would try to walk, it would abruptly stop after a quarter of a mile.  Just stop.  I realize now that after it would grind to a halt, I would give up immediately - not even TRY to continue on - and leave it in a huff, flipping my hair at it.  (That is what the Evil Fat wanted me to do, I'm sure.)  I could have just started The Beast up again and walked another quarter of a mile, but I wouldn't. 

However, last night I finally decided if my Aunt Trudy can work out and my cousin Dave can work out and my  "get healthier" buddy Kathy can, then I could.  I faced The Beast with NO FEAR and started walking.  (Now mind you, my daughter can come over and use The Beast and run for miles on it without it stopping on her and throwing her into the wall, so I know it's fully functional, and I also know that I am not so heavy that my sheer weight should cause the thing to quit and the belt to congeal - so I took an attitude of GO AHEAD AND MAKE MY DAY, YOU STUPID TREADMILL...)

I made it past the quarter mile mark and The Beast was still working.  I increased the speed and headed to the half mile mark.   It was nice that I could do this without bothering anyone.  The Beast is in the bedroom and normally in the evening my husband is sleeping in there, but he's laid off, so no one to wake up!  However, there is no radio in there and the T.V. on the treadmill isn't hooked up to the cable, so all I had to entertain myself was the heavy breathing and conversations in my head.  Being the cheap date that I am, I'm easily amused by myself so talking to myself in my own head can be fun at times, if not a sign of some one in dire need of clinical treatment ...

"Why are you walking - you don't need to walk!"  (Evil Fat speaking...)

I walk because I want to be healthier and live a week longer, OK?  So shut up and accept it!  (That would be me...)

"You're just gonna die anyway, so why bother?"

So I'm gonna die some day, so what!   At least I'll be able to walk to the door and let hospice in!

"You never follow through on anything, do you?  Just stop now and go look up intersting trivia on the internet..."

Oh, I'll look up trivia - like how to get rid of EVIL VISCERAL FAT!

The Beast decided to stop on me at the speed at 3.5 miles an hour and when I was in a healthy pant mode.  I stopped myself from flinging forward and put my feet on the side rails and looked at The Beast and said, "Not this time, you *#$*^#^* piece of @*%^*@*%!!"  I restarted it and started walking again.  I called my husband in so he could watch to see if he could see what was wrong.  He sat on the bed and watched me walk and sure enough, The Beast stopped again.  My husband said, "Maybe if you use a programmed walk routine, it wouldn't do that - something with more incline and stuff..."

So I chose the first program on it and started again.  It started out nice enough, but increased in angle and speed.   OK, this was making me sweat - that is good - but it kept increasing speed and incline and halfway through the little routine when I was practically parallel to the floor, I gave up.  "Gotta work my way up for that...pant pant...can't do it right off the bat...pant pant..." 

All in all I walked 1.5 miles total, some on a flat surface and some facing the ceiling, but I walked and sweated and panted a lot.  

One step at a time...

January 22, 2009 - I have kept my treadmill walking up, and my legs love me.   Seriously, they feel so much better.  I don't snap and pop so loud in the morning when I roll out of bed.  Viva moving. 

Last night after we all headed to bed and the house was quiet, the two older cats decided it was wrestlemania time and you could hear them fighting in the living room.  Stewart the Young One was not involved, as he was in bed with me, but he seemed interested in what was going on in the living room.   The cats have to play when the dogs are sleeping and/or upstairs or they are 'arrested' as it were by the Cat Police Dogs.  Last night was no exception;   After several minutes of knock down drag out fur flyin' cat fun, Kia and Jake could be heard on high alert, barking and heading down the stairs like a herd of buffalo.   I chuckled.  The cats scattered.  All was quiet again. 

Ten minutes later, the older cats started up again.  This time, they were in the bedroom with us, fighting loudly.  Kia and Jake took less to respond this time, flying down the stairs as they barked...and this made my husband and I burst out in laughter.  You had to be here, but it was very funny.  Keystone Dog Cops.  Jake took it upon himself to police the whole house for several minutes to assure himself this was NOT going to happen again, and I fell asleep giggling to myself, because all I could picture was Jake as the dog version of Barney Fife.  

The Wee One pulled off a final grade of 'B' in his Chem class!  I was so excited about this fact.  All those hours of studying paid off, even though I will be in therapy for years to come from the shock of it all.  Monday starts a new semester with new classes.  (He will be in Physics this time and I can foresee a whole new semester of fun for all.)

My husband has been doing lots of fix up projects whilst he's been laid off, which doesn't hurt my feelings at all.  I now have shelves under the stairwell, an internally clean dryer, and chairs that needed fixing are fixed.  As long as it doesn't involve money, he's doing it. 

January 25, 2009 - It's zero degrees currently (but apparently feels like -13, according to the Weather Channel) and the sky is clear as a bell.  Many stars above to gaze and wonder about.  It's 4:30 a.m.  I couldn't sleep any longer, so why fight it - I got up.  I let the doggies out to do their business and they announced to the whole neighborhood that they were awake.  I'm sure the neighbors appreciate that early morning wake up bark.

I had my yearly mammogram on Friday afternoon.  It was by far the fastest and most efficient boob smashing I've had to date.  I was in and out in record time.  At the front desk they offered (for a mere five dollars) a pad you can use to help cushion the smashing part.  I declined.   Not that I'm cheap, but mammograms do not bother me.  I figure that after all the kids as babies used 'the girls' as trampolines and the years I ran a press in a factory they were shut in more than one door, that most of my nerve endings are dead anyway in that area and a mammogram is really no big whoop at this point. 

Every year they ask, "Is there a history of breast cancer in your family?" and every year I respond, "I think breast cancer is the ONLY cancer we have not had in my family that I can recollect..."  I hope that response stays the same for a long time to come.   (There has been colon cancer, lung cancer, brain cancer, bladder cancer, skin cancer, and probably a bunch more I can't recall right now, and Lord only knows what is brewing and stewing inside of me at the present, but I don't remember anyone every having breast cancer...)  My friend Kathy had to go for her colonoscopy last week, and that reminds me that I have to get my butt in to my doctor and request one myself here soon - I've never had one - but it's time.  Out of all the cancers that repeat in my family tree, colon is the biggest cancer on the hit parade.  I am going to ask, if they are up there anyway, can they keep going up and pull Stella the hernia back inside to whence she came.  Smile.  Besides, the get you all loopy on drugs and it's like a mini-vacation.  I hope I'm awake enough to watch, however, because it's would be interesting.  I would have loved to sit in on my husband's the times he went, but they send home pictures anyway for the family album, so I guess I didn't miss anything.   "What's that, Grandma?"  "Oh, that is your Grandpa's colon!   It used to be quite dashing in its day..."  It would be easier on everyone if we were just born with "security" cameras mounted to monitor every major organ in our bodies, wouldn't it? 

The fish know that when I get up in the morning that normally it's time to eat.  When I get up early like this, though, I don't feed them until their normal time.  All four fish are in the corner of the tank staring at me.  Roderick and Matthew, the two large goldfish, will make mad dashes to the top of the tank and dive back down to the corner, as if to show me that I'm failing miserably as a provider.  (And they say fish have only a three second memory - I have never believed that.  ) 

I had the weirdest dream when I took a long nap yesterday (...hmmm, suddenly it's clear to me why I couldn't sleep past 4:30 a.m. this morning...)  It was a serious dream for the most part, about nuclear war and such - I forgot most of it except the last few minutes where I have the people who would listen to me in a garage, warning them that the strike would happen at midnight but they didn't believe me and they all said they would leave the safety of the garage if there were no bombs set off by midnight, etc.  (Come on, how safe is an old garage in the first place?  It is as safe as the 'duck and hide' technique they taught kids in school during the Sputnik era...)  Anyway, sure enough to my word, and why it happened in the first place I cannot remember, there were strikes everywhere and mushroom clouds on the horizon.  There was even a blast that sent a fire ball over the garage, but amazingly none of us were fried alive.  (I did tell everyone we'd all be dead soon anyway from the radiation, so wasn't I miss Mary Sunshine?)  The suddenly it's daylight and I kept telling them it wasn't over, and sure enough, here comes this huge bomb directly at the garage, but it stops mid air as if it were looking for someone.   I step out of the garage and it comes looking for me...I step back in the garage and the bomb floats up to the windows looking for me.  (I did this for a while in the dream until I realized it must be some sort of Sandy heat seeking missile and stopped and hid in the door frame.)  So, out of nowhere when the bomb couldn't find me, it takes a nose dive into a bean bag chair that was outside of the garage and doesn't go off - just plows into the bean bag chair and sits there.  We all leave the garage now, and where the bomb was suddenly there is a anime version of ME popping out of the bean bag chair with a smile on my anime face, and I turn to my husband and say, "What the hell is that all about?"  That is when I woke up and shook my head at the stupidity of the whole thing, meandered out into the living room and told my husband the parts I could remember.  "You have serious issues, woman..." he commented. 

"No, I just have very weird dreams!"

February 1, 2009 - You know the winter has been a very cold winter when 36 degrees makes one think of opening up windows to let in the warm, fresh air.  It does feel 'warm' out and my first impression this morning when I walked out with the dogs was to open up the windows.  (I didn't, of course, coming to my senses and just opting to stand out in the dark sniffing the air with the dogs.)

I keep an old plastic chair out in the dog pen.  I use it when I haul out my telescope to that part of the yard.  The chair collects drips from the house that will re-freezes in the seat part of the chair.  The dogs have learned how to get the chunk of ice out of the chair and they have spent many hours this winter playing 'ice hockey' with their chair ice puck or just eating the chair ice in general.  They also get very possessive about their chair ice and will haul it in on occasion when I'm not paying attention.  I find much humor in the dog's ice fetish and think to myself that the best 'stuff' in life is the little things - such as chair ice blobs. 

So far, second semester for the wee one is going well.  He is now on a kick to take some money he's saved and paint his room and get new carpet.  (We live in a very very old house that could use all the paint and carpet it can get.)  He wants designs on his walls, and has asked questions about how to achieve his various goals.  He comes to me for the design part.  I have an artistic flair, but I fear I cannot come up with anything near what he has in his head.   His father is taking him to Mernards this morning to pick out paint and such.   I miss the days when a simple Spongebob stick up wall picture was high class decor for him.

February 11, 2009 - Well, the wee one is almost done with his room.  His Dad is taking him to get carpet tomorrow, and after that is down he will be done.  He ran out of steam as the project progressed, so his Dad and I have been helping him along.  I did touch up work and trim and also painted a few other things.  I wanted it to be done so he can move back in to his own room.  The front bedroom where he's relocated to (or as we call it - "Kenny's Room" - since his friend Kenny stays there when he's over) is a mess and I would love to have that cleaned up again.  I don't think he realized how much work was involved with painting and such.  He has learned.   He did a vector type art of blue rays on a white wall with black silhouettes of building.

I have been too down and out and just 'blah' to even post on line lately.  Sigh.  With the economy and slow work and worrying about the kids surviving and America surviving and all... well, it's just a sad time for all of us.  My husband was told today that he will be laid off 'forever' as they are not calling anyone back and they thanked him for his work, etc., but the fact remains that here he is again having to start all over.  At least he's not so alone this time since EVERYONE in the whole world is out of work and looking, so there will be more people to meet and talk to while waiting in line for soup...

I know my parents lived and survived during the 'Great Depression'...my Mom was born in 1922 and my Dad was born in 1913.   They told many stories of the Depression and their bad times and problems.   Are we all destined to go back to growing our own gardens and canning and killing our own squirrels to eat?  Do I invest in chickens now so I can trade their eggs later for the neighbor's milk?  Should I re-read the 'Little House on the Prairie' series so I am prepared for what the future holds?  Must give us pause...

I know we can survive this as a country, as families, and as humans.  This is all human induced bad times so we humans will have to fix it, won't we?  But it's the waiting and the time during the 'fixing'   - that is the hard part in our human minds.  Worry about things such as "How will we pay bills?" and  "How will we afford housing and food?" drags on us.  I know people have been asking things like this since humans learned to talk.  I think people like me forget other people suffer and go without all the time.  This is nothing new for a lot of people, just new to some people...  I fear many people will go from deducting for donations to charities on their taxes to standing in lines at those very charities. 

The more I think things through the more overwhelmed my little mind gets.  It sort of freezes you in place in your own mind when you over think things.  It doesn't help that I've been having such vivid nightmares as of late.  I am not sure if it's due to the 'over thinking' and stress, or because I got my medicines refilled and went with generic to save money.  Oy vay.   The dreams have been just dreadful and detailed.  (I always have animated, vivid dreams - my mind is a hotbed for extravagant dreams, but not on such a level of death and destruction!)  Sigh.

I will have to just snap out of it and be strong now, won't I?  I can't be down if my husband is down.  I am just sometimes tired of being the 'up' one and the one that fixes things or smoothes over the bad times.  I don't want to be the fluffy frosting on life anymore...  I want to be the cake.

Not that this has anything to do with my over all 'blah' state, but tonight I stopped at a red light and I TURNED MY CAR OFF because I wanted to enter my recent purchase into my check book!!!  WHERE WAS MY MIND AT?!!  Fortunately for me, I live in a very small town and no one was waiting behind me so I was able to put the car in park and start it back up and drive on once I realized what I had just done.  I don't think it's related to early dementia (although that does seem to run rampant in my inherited genetics) as much as just my state of mind in general for the last few weeks.  Duh.

February 12, 2009 - I slept 'real' sleep last night for the first time in forever.   No dreadful dreams.  Apparently blabbing to a journal helps?  (Or it works for me, we all have different ways of dealing with life.)  Or maybe it was because I sat up and watched the History Channel documentary on the Mayan Long Count calendar, and just knowing the world is going to end soon creates a feeling of "why worry" because all of the problems today don't mean anything in the big picture.   Who knows why I slept well.  I am just content with the fact I did sleep well.

I know it bugs me that since my husband has been home (although he's been a big help and doing so much around the house) the fact remains that he's always HERE.  The T.V. is always on.  In the morning he switches between Bob and Tom (the radio show) to the T.V. morning news (so I've heard TONS more news than I'm used to hearing) and it's never quiet here anymore.  No quiet time.  No morning quiet time for Sandy.  Maybe that's what is wrong with me.   I suppose that I miss the morning or evenings to collect my thoughts in silence after the wee one went to bed and husband went to work.  I could just get myself a pair of ear phones that block sound from the outside world or let my hearing degenerate naturally (which it is doing and I also have genetics to thank for that) to achieve the 'quiet' I miss, yes?

February 17, 2009 - Houston, we have QUIET!  Contented sigh.  

My husband is back to work.  Well, sort of.  They called him last week to mention that he'd not be coming back EVER (which plunged him in to a pit of despair) then called him on Friday to say they really didn't want to lose him and asked if he would drive the company truck.  WOOT.   No one can turn down a job nowadays, so he said yes and now he's a truck drivin' fool.  He's never driven a bigger truck so he was out of one pit of despair into another - but this truck is not so big that he needs a CDL license and I'm sure he'll figure it all out as he goes.  So far no one has gotten hurt or run over, so he has that going for him.  I know he was worried about it - but IT'S A JOB. 

Monday my son went to early jazz and husband went to work and I was A-L-O-N-E. I literally DANCED in the living room and screamed with joy.  (This got the dogs all riled up and they chased each other then chased the cats upstairs and all hell broke loose.)  I finally got the dogs calmed down and put outside, then I just did stuff around the house and it felt so GOOD.   It's the little things...

On the way to work the other day, I was about to cross over a bridge down the road that runs over a creek, and just as I came up on that bridge, three rather large swans came bursting through from under the bottom rail as if the guard rail was giving birth to them.  (Mind you, they could have walked AROUND the railing from the creek, another five feet or so, but they just pushed themselves through this small space with gusto.)  Plop, there they were in the way in the middle of the road, looking around as if to say, "Yeah, we MEANT to do that - what are you staring at??"  They had the look and attitude of a young Elvis in a leather jacket and curled lip.  Traffic was backed up a few cars deep on both sides as we all had to take turns going around them because they weren't moving.  I still can't figure out why they would push themselves under that guard rail instead of walking around it.  Foul...go figure.

February 22, 2009 - We had at least six inches of snow fall in the last 24 hours.  The landscape surrounding my house was a pristine blanket of white.  (This has since changed a bit as the local collection of animals have been out on morning maneuvers.  This blanket of white is quite blinding at the moment because the sun is out in all its glory today.  I went out with the dogs just now and all I could see was glaring white and a million eye floaties.  Since I figured this was not healthy for my retinas, I decided to come back into the dark cave. 

As I type my husband is going out to snowblow the driveway.  I told him he would need sunglasses.  He proclaimed that he "didn't need no stinkin' sunglasses" and I responded that it's his decision not to wear any but when he's sun blind I am going to take him far away from here and just drop him off. 

My daughter is home for the weekend.   She's sick and I begged her to come home so we could heal her.  (Of course we can't heal her, we can only offer pampering, orange juice, and love with lots of pets to suck the poison out of her psyche.)  She leaves in a week to go to Florida with her boyfriend and his Mom, and I didn't want her sick the whole time.  Many of us can attest to the fact that flying with a head cold is NOT fun nor would we recommend it to our friends and family members.   

My oldest son is coming over today.   He has been M.I.A. for quite a while as he has a girlfriend now.  His girlfriend is not feeling well, however, so he's coming over to see his sister and brother.  (He is on the phone right now with my youngest.  You should hear them giggling.  His sister is happy and the wee one is happy.  They miss their big bro in the worst way.  They are quite excited he is coming over.  The mood in the house is almost giddy.) 

I just went out to clean off the cars so we could move them after a spot is blown out to where they can be moved.  Wow, that was a lot of snow.  (We don't need no stinkin' garage!  We ain't so fancy to need a separate building for our vehicles ... we'd rather spend hours digging them out of a snow bank - geez!)

February 23, 2009 - It was nice having all the kids home, I must admit.  They all get along so well and I love to listen to them talk and interact.  My daughter's nose continued to run and run yesterday so I scoured through my collection of over the counter cold meds to see if there was something to help her snot factor.  I had Nyquil (for night time use) and Nyquil gel pills (for night time use) and various other things (for night time use) and finally found a box of Tylenol Cold and Sinus.  I gave her two pills.

I went to lie down and take a nap after that, giving the siblings time to themselves and all.  (I just wanted an excuse to take a nap, ok?)  When I woke up my daughter was soundly asleep on the couch with books spread out all over the place where she had been working on homework.  I stared at her for a bit and asked my husband how long she'd been sleeping.  "'Bout an hour..." he said.  We did things around the house and watched some T.V. and she was still sound asleep.  "Man, she needed to sleep!" my husband said.   "No doubt!" I responded.  By six p.m. we were starting to get worried as she was still soundly sleeping.  "What did you give her for her cold?" my husband ventured to ask.  "I gave her Tylenol Cold and Sinus!  The only thing in the house that wasn't 'night time' stuff!" I defended myself.  "What was the dosage supposed to be?" he asked.  I went and got the box.  I gave her the correct amount of pills and read for side effects, etc. 

As I was getting ready to show my husband the box to prove that I was innocent, I notice in little letters on the front of the box "For Night Time Comfort" and I just laughed.  "I think I killed her!" I snorted.  I had given her a night time help-you-sleep drug during the day.  Duh.  She had wanted to leave to go back home around five p.m. so she could work on homework, but there she was - snoring on the couch. 

Her brothers came downstairs and sat on her plus the dogs helped by licking her face a lot and she finally rolled off the couch looking as if she was hit by a train.  I confessed what I had done to her.   "Mom, you ruffee'd me!" she drawled which made us all laugh.  I countered that she really needed the sleep to get better anyway, so maybe it was a good thing.  The kids expressed their happiness that I didn't work behind the counter at a pharmacy.  "What's the matter woman, can't you read?" my husband chimed in.   I guess the moral to this story is, if you are going to drug your kids, don't hang around the house afterwards for the verbal insults.

February 24, 2009 - Yjod od ,r yu[omh pmr lru yp yjr tohjy pg jp,r tpe/ 

That spaz spew above says, "This is me typing one key to they right of home row."  I find it funny, and I did it only because the little indents and/or bumps that help guide to the starting keys (on the 'F' and 'J' keys) are worn away.  Sometimes I sit down and start typing like a bat outta hell and end up being one key off of home row.  I am a fast typist and for the most part I'm fairly error free (that statement does NOT include my horribly maiming of all things related to or appearing as grammar) but I subconsciously have to have that starting point;   I have to have the 'F' and 'J' defined.  Everyone needs a starting point... which applies to life in general when you ponder it.

I was watching the birds fight for their right to hog all the seed this a.m. - there are many out there - and was laughing at their piggish ways.  After watching them for a while, I started to wonder why it's so important for me to feed the birds and why I enjoy watching them all year long and it hit me - it's because that was something my Mom was very vehement about.  She fed birds and could name birds and had books on birds.  I wondered if now I feed the birds as a learned behavior or because I enjoy it as much?  (I do enjoy it, I must admit.   I spent a whole summer raising a baby black bird, for gosh sakes.  I have sandhill cranes that claim my yard as their own and bring their babies to me.)      

My Mom never got her driver's license.   I can look back now and figure it was one of two things...sheer fear of driving (many people have fear and/or panic attacks over doing things as I can attest to) or lack of self esteem (Mom sorely lacked self esteem and would let things squish her down mentally...)  Since she didn't have her driver's license, she couldn't just get up and escape the family EVER without someone driving her, so she would walk.  She'd take Grandpa's old walking cane and just hoof around the woods or down the road and back.   As I got older I would sometimes go with her.  I remember one time walking with her up a hill to a group of trees off the road and we just sat there as she named birds for me and also named off various wild plants.  It was a peaceful time in the woods.  I can see now why she would 'escape' there when she was fed up with life at home.  My Dad was not an easy person to live with and I am sure neither was I when I was a teen...

Mom fed birds and would walk to the woods - that was her escape;  Her regrouping point - her 'F' and 'J' keys.  I carry on the bird feeding and realize that I've spent many moments calming down and pondering life and regrouping as well as I watch the little birdies fight for seed.  I thank my Mom and the birdies and right about now I'm thinking it's pretty sweet being 'me'... 

March 2, 2009 - March, in my neck of the woods, came in like a cold and worn out lion who didn't have enough red meat in his diet and was probably near hypothermia.  Hopefully that means March will go out like a vitamin charged buffed up muscled bound lamb having hot flashes, 'cause baby right now it's COLD. 

My daughter is in Florida on spring break with her boyfriend and his Mom.  They are staying with family down there, and I hope she has a good time.  She left here with a head cold and large amounts of mobile mucus.  We'll see how it goes.  She emailed me late last night to report that the flight was good, but she ended up with a migraine.  Poor kid.   She's had issues with migraines all her life.  I believe the pressure from the plane and the already present pressure of the excessive amount of snot in her head were the culprit this time.  She said it was in the 50s and was a bit sad about that, but she did make a point to say she was wearing her flip flops with her sweat shirt.  (You can't be on vacation officially until you wear your flip flops.)

The weekend was an odd one.  I received anniversary flowers at work from my husband on Friday.  They were very pretty.  As I was bringing the bunch of flowers back to my office (with the balloons - as we all know I HAVE to have balloons) one of the balloons popped on the overhead lights.  It was the loudest pop of a balloon I think I've ever heard.   It sounded like a rifle shot!  Doug flew out of his office to see what was going on.  "You're trying to give me flashbacks to 'Nam!" he accused.  

Friday was also our district band festival (which our school was hosting.)   Both the concert and symphonic bands got division 1 ratings.  However, there was an incident with one of the students that caused quite an upset with the group of kids who were around that student at the time.  We spent Friday night discussing the event with our son, who was one of the group who saw the initial incident and it upset him quite a bit.   Saturday a general call went out to all parents with High School kids from the superintendent (via the school alert system) to make a general statement as to what happened and what was done, etc. 

This caused my son to feel bad again, so we took him along with us to our anniversary dinner at Red Lobster.   The mood didn't feel very festive, so I didn't get my normal crab legs.  (Crab legs must be saved for the moments that are carefree and magical and sprinkled with fairy dust and margaritas anyway...)  Then we went grocery shopping afterwards and stopped at Best Buy. 

Sunday I cleaned like I've never cleaned before.  Curtains got washed - all the bedding - I sucked up dust bunnies behind and under beds.  I cleaned and cleaned!  I came to the conclusion that we are pigs.  Pigs probably don't have as many dust bunnies as I found here on Sunday.  (Even if pigs did have dust bunnies, they would at least eat them and save me the trouble of sucking them up.)  My son had three friends over in the afternoon and they watched movies and played Rock Band and we all had pizza and anniversary cake.    

That was my weekend.   Nothing fancy, just a weekend.  And now I'm off to conquer the new week.  Viva waking up breathing!  Now, I go forth!

March 5, 2009 - I stood outside this morning keeping watch over the pooping puppies and enjoying the relatively warm breeze that was blowing.  The rooster out at the farm to our West started his morning routine as well.  I was was waiting for his traditional 'er er er er errrrrrrr' wake up call but what I heard was 'ack er ack er ack' that came out almost in a sputter.  I looked towards the field and I am sure my one eyebrow did the whole 'Spock in a quandary' thing.   The dogs normally don't pay any attention to the rooster's morning routine but they also looked towards the sound, cocked their heads, looked up at me with a "should we be concerned?" look, then looked back again to the field.  We all stood there for some time in a silent state of questioning, but after a few feeble attempts of 'ack er ackk er ackkkkk' the poor guy got his groove back.  I should buy that poor rooster a bag of Ricola.

This reminds me of how good humans are at getting all worked up over something new and then letting it go.   Oh sure, we get our panties in a bunch over something in the beginning but then we lose steam and let it slide.  I can only imagine how we'd handle an invasion from outer space...  "You aliens get off my lawn!"  "Now, Henry, they are just aliens.  They are not doing any harm!"  "Humphhhh."   I am ever so glad there are a select few humans who have a passion and fire for their goal in life and never lose it. 

My sister stopped at my work yesterday to bring me a treat.  She brought me two apples and a pack of those sugar free Jell-O cups.  (Lime and Orange.)  No one at my house will eat Jell-O, explaining that Jell-O is gross and moves and jiggles too much as if it's "alive."  I, personally, grew up on special treats made from Jell-O so I am fond of it, especially lime Jell-O.  My mom used to make Jell-O salads with celery, carrots, pineapple, and other things in them.  When I was very sick Mom would give me sips of pre-congealed Jell-O.  Normally I only get Jell-O now at Christmas when my sister makes me lime Jell-O and Irish shortbread.  (*side note - if you type the word Jell-O a lot, it loses all meaning...*)

I was busy at work, so my sister only stayed for a bit, but after she left I grabbed the first lime Jell-O cup and was just going to suck it out of the plastic cup but then I had Doug in my office helping me with an issue, so I felt sucking a wad of Jell-O out of a cup in front of him was not very professional.  I was so desperate for that Jell-O that I rummaged around in my waste basket for the fork I had earlier.  I finally got up and went and got a spoon and enjoyed the first cup like a lady.  After Doug left, I proceeded to open and suck out every last cup of Jell-O my sister had brought to me like they were Jell-O shots at a frat party.

I am glad there was only 10 calories per cup but I was not glad I had eaten all six because whoever said "there's always room for Jell-O" had NOT eaten six cups worth in a row at a high rate speed.  (Picture John Belushi in 'Animal House'...)  I spent the afternoon with a Jell-O hangover. 

March 9, 2009 - This was an interesting weekend to say the least.  We lost a dear friend (Bill Secondi) on Friday.  It was unexpected and a shock to everyone.  My son dates one of his granddaughters and is best friends with another granddaughter.  We've worked with family members for years, and Bill and Sharon watched my daughter as daycare providers when she was starting elementary school.  It had me pondering death all weekend.  It is going to happen to all things and everyone, but it's how we deal with it as the living that perplexes me sometimes.  Death is only unfair to the living...

Saturday my daughter got back from Florida.  She had a slight burn on her feet and face, because there ended up being ONE sunny and warm day she could walk on the beach barefoot - but just one.  (I see now that she's back it's warmed up a lot down there...)   She did have fun, however, and that is all that matters.  She showed us all her pictures from the trip and gave us a virtual tour.  My favorite picture was the one I'll post here, where she and her boyfriend were walking back from a restaurant and it was so cold they were cuddled up in their hoodies.  It makes me laugh because this is the type of picture you would expect from Michigan - not Florida. 

I think I mentioned before that I got an ice maker (counter model - stand alone type) for Christmas.  I am a huge fan of ice in my water and ice in anything I drink (except for hot cocoa and coffee of course) and the family was sick of keeping up with my ice demands, so they got me an ice maker.  It makes 'nipple' ice cubes, and I made a batch yesterday.  When I was content with the amount in the freezer I turned off the ice maker and drained the remaining water.  Right after all the water was drained, I turned to go empty the container of water and proceeded to drop it on the kitchen floor.  It was in slow motion, I swear.  The water went everywhere.  I cleaned it up. 

THEN, as I was capping the drain thingy on the back of the ice maker, I sliced my index finger's knuckle on the metal base.  Blood spewed everywhere.  Geez.  I do believe it could use a stitch or two, but for now I just have the poor girl wrapped up in gauze and tape, and NOT using my index finger to type is a challenge.  (We take our body parts for granted.  I shan't take my pick nose finger for granted ever again...)

March 10, 2009 - It's raining again.  It rained all weekend.  I have the Great Lake of Poop that has formed in the dog pen.  (I can at least say I live on a lake...)  I wish we all had holes in our yards where we could dump all this excess rain and it would travel via magical tubes to parts of the country that are having a drought, although I'm sure by doing that we would upset the balance of nature somehow and it would cause more storms and untold chaos in the big picture - but it's a nice thought to think you could possibly share your excess rain with someone who needs it. 

My daughter brought me back a little glass pretty-pretty of two palm trees from Florida.  I love glass stuff.  Glass fascinates me.  Glass is made of sand.  Beaches and sand and rocks are some of my favorite things.  (Whoa - for a minute there this was sounding like a 'See Jane Run' book.)  I was inspired (taunted is a better term) by my husband (who knows I have an unnatural ability to break the things I like the most that are made out of glass) to put my glass palm trees in my special 'Glass Cabinet' which is designated for special items I do not want to break or be broken.  I put the trees next to the vase my daughter had made me years ago when she went to a ceramics class.  (The vase has two pictures - one side is the sun and one side is the moon.  I always keep the moon side facing out as I like the night skies and darkness.  I know when my daughter's been here because the sun side will be facing out because she likes the sun and warmth of summer.  This has been a silent game of ours for years...)

My friend and coworker Judy also brought me back a present from Florida (possibly due to the fact I begged her for one before she left on vacation, I'm not sure) and it was a little glass dolphin!  I was so happy.  Now I had a dolphin to go with the palm trees.  I couldn't wait to get it home.  When I got home I carefully unwrapped the dolphin as I was announcing to the boys, "Hey, you guys!   Look what Judy got me!!"  (Mind you, I have gauze and Band-Aids on my right hand the size of New Jersey from yesterdays cut 'n spew blood fest, plus the dogs were in my way and I bumped into Kia's butt, but I digress ...) That is when the dolphin went airborne.  (I could see the look on my son's face - That look said a multitude of things such as  "I knew you were going to to that, Mom" and "This is why we can't have nice things, Mom!" and "Cripes, Mom - are you having a stroke or what?")  The beautiful blue dolphin bounced off the carpet (phew) and then the kitchen rug (phew) but then the poor guy hit the cement kitchen floor (wahhhhhhh.)  His tail fell off.  I stood there staring at it as if my eyes would heal the thing.  My husband got up and 'took over' as he said.   "I will glue on his tail, and then tell me where you want it and I'll put it there for you!" 

The glass dolphin is now safely housed with the palm trees in my 'safe from Sandy' cabinet.  The boys did little playlettes and reenactments of my dolphin throwing and yesterday's blood letting which were quite entertaining (however I question their obvious over-dramatic style when it came to portraying my clumsiness.)

Last night I caught four deer in the act of knocking the bird feeder around out front.  When I shined a flashlight on them through the window they seemed quite perturbed that I would bother them in such a way.   It wasn't until the dog police showed up, barking and smashing their faces against the window and getting snot all over that the deer decided to move on.  

My BFF Vickie called last night and we talked for a long long time.  I love her voice.  It calms me.   She also makes me laugh and I laughed a lot last night, although we pondered the greater questions of life  - we will still end up laughing.  I don't care how far away she is, she's always 'here' with me.  I love that feeling. 

March 20, 2009 - The last ten days have been uneventful, although when I was sitting here pondering what to write, it dawns on me that 'uneventful' can be just fine in the big picture of things. 

I have been enjoying the warmer weather and the clear skies, when the skies are clear.  The stars have been so bright and I do so love to watch the heavens (that is, until I get a neck ache - one can only stare directly up for so long ... or until the dogs start to wrestle and I get in their path of destruction ...)  This is the International Year of Astronomy, after all.  So keep looking up and enjoy.  There are times, however, when looking at all that awesome stuff up there makes me sad.  We can see it and all, but we can't touch it.  (Perhaps that is best - sometimes humans have an uncanny ability to ruin the things they touch...)  I've also had the joy of being serenaded at night by sandhill cranes who I assume are yelling at the geese next door or just having wild crane sex, and geese who are yelling at the sandhill cranes next door or having wild goose sex and owls and turkeys and the deer who are mad that I'm outside in the dark interfering with the bird feeder raids, so they go stand across the road and stomp their hooves on the pavement as if that is going to make me go back in the house.  

Soon it will be the wee one's Spring Break trip to Sandusky (Cedar Point) and Sea World, etc.  I am grateful for him being in band, as all the kids got to travel with the band(s) and go places we never have been.  Since the boy is in every band possible, he will be performing a lot.  They play to pay for their supper in most cases, as it were.  I went to the last band parents meeting so I could volunteer to keep their web page up to date.   It is the least I can do. 

The wee one wanted to earn extra money to buy a new monitor for his PC.  He wants a big one, and found the one he wanted for $200.  I told him how much I would pay him an hour to do certain chores and told him to keep track of his time doing said chores.  He has logged in 2.28 hours so far.  The thrill of physical labor wore off quickly.  He asked if I could buy it NOW and he'd pay me back, but I told him that being 16 is way too young to start getting in debt.  (He already owes his brother money for something related to his XBox...)  We'll see how this goes.  I expect he will not be getting a monitor any time soon.

Work has been so busy for me, even though sales wise and economy wise, we're suffering just like the rest of the world.  I have been frustrated sometimes at the volume of work, but then again, I am very happy I am employed, so I won't continue to lament.  I will just seize the day and grab what I can by the neck and throw it to the ground with gusto.

March 23, 2009 - This weekend was a productive weekend.  Our dryer was dying a slow death due to a bad belt, so my husband fixed that on Saturday morning.  I had researched on the internet on how to fix that type of belt for that model of dryer and all I could find was that everyone who had changed the belt themselves ended up having to cut a hole in the side to get to the belt pulley.   Apparently the belt is originally installed by magic anorexic fairies with very small arms.  Once the belt was replace, the dryer was happy again, and instead of drying a load of wash in installments I could now dry a whole load at one time!   Amazing! 

My daughter came over to do her two week build up of laundry so she was lucky to get in on the new and improved drying capacity we had.  While her laundry was doing it's thing, she and her two brothers and her boyfriend then went to eat lunch together.  (My oldest son had taken my youngest son for the weekend.  The wee one misses his big brother a lot, so my oldest was doing us all a favor - giving my husband and I time along together and it the kids got to spend quality time with each other.) 

After the kids got back from lunch, the boys sped off back to my oldest son's house (for the wee one was afraid I was going to put him to work doing chores) and my daughter finished up her laundry.   She fell asleep on the couch and I woke her up and shooed her out.  My husband and I had plans (delayed anniversary plans) and I was chompin' at the bit to get to Red Lobster. 

Red Lobster was wonderful.   I had a total of FOUR MARGARITAS during our time there, and was very happy in general by the time we left.  (My husband was driving, thank goodness.)  We had a drink at the bar as we waited to get seated, which took almost an hour.  Dinner was marvelous;  I got the king crab legs and I cannot even begin to tell you how delicious they were.  Apparently I was going at those legs with gusto, as my husband said he was being pelted by crab meat shrapnel.  I always find it interesting how you can be in a packed restaurant but feel like you are alone at a table ... it's like you totally tune out everyone around you and have a private room - or at least I do when I'm eating crab.  I would pity any human getting their fingers in the way when I'm eating crab legs...

I did happen to hear something that caused me to laugh out loud from the table closest to us.  There was a family get together with 10 adults and 7 little kids.  The smallest of the kids was not happy to be at Red Lobster and was causing quite the commotion.  His Mom took him for a bit of a walk, and he seemed calmer when they came back, but in general, if you have a table with lots of small kids it can be a challenge for any group of adults.  At one point their waiter asked if he could get them anything.  The one Mom responded, "A babysitter?"  That made me laugh. 

Sunday my husband got up early and started 'spring cleaning' - he had the urge to rearrange some things and so we spent the day moving things and cleaning.  We did get a lot done.  It felt good to say that the weekend was productive.  While I was cleaning, I found a bag on the kitchen table where my husband had thrown it and opened it up.  There were 20 tulip bulbs sprouting like crazy!  "OH MY GOSH, I'LL SAVE YOU !" I screamed out loud and dropped everything and ran outside.  I dug up my little flower bed up front like a manic dog and started to plant the poor bulbs.  It dawned on me that I had intended to plant them last fall but forgot, so they hung out in the laundry room all winter in a far corner.  That far corner no doubt was drafty enough to freeze the poor things.  I hope the poor dears make it - I felt so guilty for forgetting all about them. 

So, that was my weekend.   I feel rather refreshed from it all.  Now I'm off to conquer a new week!  

March 24, 2009 - Picture yourself standing in the dark while admiring the southern stars and humming "I Feel For You" by Chaka Khan (because you have had that song stuck in your head and for half the night and have been repeating to yourself "I'm gonna rock you Chaka Khan, that's all I want to do" over and over and over)...until suddenly that chorus is replaced by a distant thundering rumble.  You cock your head a bit to try to locate the sound as it grows louder.  You ask yourself, "Are the neighbor's horses loose again?"   There almost seems to be an actual vibration in the ground from the thundering.   Rogue buffaloes?  Jurassic Park soundtrack?  Then you see what it is - it's Stewie the Cat, running up the yard from who knows where after a night of frolic.  

Stewie lacks the gene that cats are suppose to possess that give them the element of stealth.  Stewie lumbers.   Stewie gallops.  Stewie may as well have a large metal spoon and a huge steel pot, banging it as he meanders through the yard.  There is nothing stealthy about Stewie.  (But don't tell Stewie, as he doesn't realize this fact.)

Yesterday morning on the way to work I saw several garbage totes ('round these parts we call them 'Herbie Curbies') that had been dragged from their positions by the road at someone's house and taken for a joy ride.  I tried to remember back to when I would have thought that was funny.   Maybe when I was 16?  I can see teenagers grabbing a garbage tote and speeding down the road while someone held on to it out the window screeching, "Be Free, Garbage Tote!  Be Free!"  Now that I'm older and PAY for that garbage service and will be the one that will has to eventually CLEAN THAT CRAP UP, I don't find it as funny anymore.  I suppose all we can do for now is be patient and wait for the day when the tote grabbers are the one's paying for their garbage service and are driving to work shaking their heads trying to remember when they thought that sort of thing was funny....

March 30, 2009 - Sigh.  I have a feeling I will use the bold capacity of the typing functionality a lot tonight as I vent, since how I feel is definitely boldish about some things that happened today.  I just wanted to give you all fair warning.  OK????   Maybe even some underlining as well and most likely a lot of italics...

Out of all the science classes that one can have in one's life time, I believe physics is the most important.   (All learning is important, mind you.  I just believe physics holds a ton of useful information you will use your entire life.)  The wee one has a D+ in his physics class.  That bit-o-information ripped my uterus out and stomped it flat on the ground, I swear.  I checked his grades on my lunch hour at work and found out this juicy tidbit of information. 

You know, I wouldn't have even checked his grades via the on line portal had it not been for the fact he called me on his lunch hour to say, "Mom, you will be mad at me, OK, but I got my cell phone taken away from me in BMA, and you have to go pick it up."  First of all - I don't have to do ANYTHING.  I let him know this fact in a calm voice.  He then asked me politely.  I said I would go get it if I had time.   He was texting his girlfriend at the time his phone was taken away.  The normal rule of thumb is TURN OFF YOUR STINKIN' CELL PHONES DURING CLASS but my wee one plumb forgot about this fact.  (He has been playing Russian roulette with his cell phone all year.  I am honestly glad he got busted.  I was so glad he got busted as a matter of fact that I emailed the teacher who took his phone away to say "THANK YOU!!"  Seriously, he needed a slap on the wrist.  School is school - texting your girlfriend can wait 'til you are at home.)   Sigh.  I was hormonal once upon a time, too.  I am not so old I can't remember lust and that sort of thing, but class time is NOT the time to be chatting with your object of desire.

Once he had my attention after that phone call, I thought I had better check his grades.  (I had checked them on Friday night and he was still in my "I-grant-thee-the-ability-to-continue-breathing" range.)  However, today ... right in front of my face was a big fat D+ for his physics class.   Seeing that grade was adding insult to injury or perhaps similar to adding salt to an open wound ... No, wait!  It was a 16 year old boy pushing his mother's 'OH NO YOU DIDN'T' button one too many times.  He was missing work (and he was supposed to ask the teacher when he could make up his missing lab work) and he flunked his last chapter test.  Not acceptable!!  He has the brains.  He is not stupid.  He's quite bright when he's not thinking with his pants.  It is NOT acceptable.  (Please note my arms are flailing like the robot from 'Lost in Space' as I say "Not Acceptable...")

I stewed over this for quite a while at work.  I did not go get his cell phone until after I knew he would be on the bus heading home.  I am not giving his cell phone back until after exam week is over.  Sigh.  When I got home we discussed the issues at hand.  He apparently knew better than to argue with me.  After we ate dinner, he did the dishes then headed upstairs to finish the pre-exam review questions.  After that, we reviewed all of those questions - several times.  He knew all the answers, and if he didn't know them right off the bat, he knew them if I posed the in the form of a question with examples.  HE KNOWS THE STUFF.  Why doesn't he try harder during the semester?!?!!!  I reminded him he has to do quite well on this exam to raise his grade to a level that will not result in his computer being taken away and bodily harm to his person.  He understands.  He was also instructed that his physics grade will not fall below a B in the coming semester, since there is no reason for it to go below that level.  Sigh.

So, that was my day today.   Saturday we had lots of rain which resulted in many worms on the surface of the driveway and yard and cement areas, but those poor worms got freeze dried on Sunday!   (We didn't get a build up of snow like so many did in Kansas and the Plains, but it was still very cold and the snow that was falling was blowing straight across in high winds.)  I assume the worms tasted like crispy noodles to the robins this morning, but the birds didn't seem to mind too much.

Yum....noodles....

March 31, 2009 - The news said to avoid pistachios due to a salmonella threat so the first thing I want this morning after reading about that issue is a bag of pistachios.  Power of suggestion.  Maybe all these salmonella threats are just a new kind of marketing technique?   When tomatoes were under the salmonella warning, I wanted tomatoes.  When spinach was flagged as contaminated, I wanted spinach...  Humans - go figure.

It's 40 degrees right now here in my little part of the world, but it seems quite warm actually.  I can hear peepers in the nearby swamps, although they are not peeping with as much gusto as they were.  I don't bother looking at the weather anymore, as it changes so much and so drastically.  I don't want to fill my head with false hopes. 

Yesterday when we got to work it was 80 degrees in our end of the building.  The heat was unreal!  My coworker Judy hates fans and hates a breeze blowing on her, but she was so hot she had an actual fan blowing into her office.  This was a first.  We complained enough to maintenance that by the end of the day it was 68 degrees in there.  (By all rights wouldn't such a sudden drop in temperature cause a thunder storm or something?)  In like a lion, out like a frozen fish stick.

The wee one got up early to study this morning.  Sigh.  I am not sure how he'll do.  Most of the information is just logical and if you know one you should know all, but that is my point of view.  I hate to go Nazi on his rear, but I will have to go back to making him review EACH NIGHT what he learned in EACH CLASS.  That helps him, even if he hates doing it. 

April 1, 2009 - Ah, the wee one pulled it off again!  He got a B+ on his physics exam.  I think he just lets stuff drag until I'm all over him.   (I don't want to grow up thinking someone has to hound him to get stuff done, but I guess while he's still in my house that is just going to have to be the way it is.)   He starts spring break today at noon.  I thought his spring trip with the band was next week, but DUH - I was wrong.  It's in May (thank goodness, as I am so not ready for packing him up and sending him anywhere.)  I left his cell phone on the kitchen table so he has that when he gets home today.  Today he just has to get through his history exam, and he'll be fine....

I have decided the wee one will start driving me everywhere.  He has no urge to drive.  When I was a teen, we couldn't WAIT to get the heck out of the house.  Driving meant FREEDOM.  I have not clue why today's kids don't have that urge.  In a way it's a good thing.   (Although my husband and I did manage to create an environment for our oldest son that caused him to want FREEDOM - he wanted his license and he wanted to GET OUT, so we kept up some ancient form of crappy parenting there.  The first kid out of the chute always gets the bum deal with young parents.  I feel bad for my oldest son sometimes, although he did turn out to be a cool person and he was and is very good to his siblings.)

It rained last night and will all week, according to the news.  We can use a little rain here... It smells like worms and wet puppies outside - a sure sign of spring! 

April 7, 2009 - So much for "sure sign of spring."  Now there is snow outside and it's 29 degrees.  Gotta love Mother Nature and Michigan.  (I think it still smells like worms and wet puppies - just colder, crunchier worms and shivering, ice encrusted puppies.)  We had many power outages yesterday from all the heavy wet snow and it's weight on tree branches (which was way too much weight on some branches, some of whom decided to just end it all and fall off the trees in mass numbers, taking power lines with them.)  Our main plant at work was without power for five hours.   I personally blame this whole weather incident and power issue on my friend and former co-worker Jim, who just recently asked me about how I had my mainframe hooked up to the battery back up in case of power outage, etc.  Yes, James - Point Taken :)

I woke up with a new personal view of my parents.  Weird.  I wasn't dreaming about them (or at least I didn't think I was) and I have no idea why I would have finally thought of this unless it's just the fact I'm a parent now myself?  Nonetheless, I woke up and I was hit with an internally broadcasted message on my brain's P.A. system - "Your parents tolerated a lot more than you have ever thought of and you must reconsider your views on your Father and Mother based on this new information!  Oh, and clean up in right ventricle aisle 3... Thank you, come again!"  

I almost reeled from this thought in my brain, and for several intense seconds I saw many little 'things' my parents did for me that I have totally blown off over the years and forgotten plus I saw many 'things' my parents tolerated and hated but didn't stop me from doing these said 'things' - and I was amazed.  I'm sure my older siblings think I got away with murder at home.   I used to think Mom and Dad just sort of gave up and let me have free reign of my domain.  Now I see that they must have suffered a lot to tolerate some of my decisions as a teen.  They must have cringed and grit their teeth more than I could ever know or care to know.  I do know, however, that the mistakes I made and learned from at that stage in my life as I was growing up must have cost my parents dearly in the emotional sanity department.  I know this now as a parent.  I didn't know it then as a teen. 

So, I start the day with a whole new respect for my parental units in my heart and head, and know what they must have known all those years ago... Being a parent is like spending the rest of your life time hearing fingernails on chalkboards, so the best you can hope for is to go deaf. 

April 15, 2009 - I am going to sit down and blog tonight even if it kills me.  (I think I would end up being the first reported case of "death by blogging" but who knows nowadays with the information highway being in dire need of several new passing lanes and a few more exits and all...) 

I just got out of a nice hot bath tub after a nice hot soak.  Ahhhhhh.  I love hot soaks.  I would live in hot water if I could.  (That would mean I would have to learn to swim eventually, wouldn't it?  I have never learned to swim.  I can do a mean dog paddle for approximately 39 seconds, but swim - nope.  So let me restate the above - I love a nice hot soak in nice hot water as long as my head is above said hot water and swimming is not involved in any way for survival...)

I thought I deserved a hot, quiet soak tonight.  I've been working very hard towards my main frame operating system upgrade this weekend.  Oy, the reading!  Oy, the learning!  I never wanted to know all of this stuff.  My fear is if all of this new information is going in to my brain, won't something old have to come out to make room for it?  (I've remembered where I parked all week - so far so good.  Maybe a lot isn't leaking out after all!?)  I figured I was being tested by God or IBM's version of God when my tape drive died this weekend.  I need my tape drive for backing up the system and such - and all my back ups are on tape should I kill off my system during the new OS upgrade.  Sigh.  IBM was out today to replace my tape drive.  It seemed in working order until (of course) the poor hardware guy (who was very kind, reassuring, and looked like a younger Adam West) was two hours away in Benton Harbor.  I think between him and the support desk in Georgia and myself, it might be working NOW.   Touch and go there for a while.  I will not know for sure, however, until midnight tonight.  If Bertha calls me complaining that back up failed, ('Bertha' being my "main frame" computer - OK, so it's actually a midrange size server, but main frame sounds more impressive and frankly, now - do you really care?) then we'll know it's still broken and I'll just find a nice tall cliff to jump off of and end it all.   When they downsized my coworker Jim several years ago and left me with all this stuff I of course never blamed Jim since it wasn't Jim's fault he had to go and leave me with all this stuff but I did resent the fact that is was now MY STUFF.  I really wish Jim was back and this was his stuff again.  (Jim's at a much better place doing cooler things now and he's always there if I need to whine or ask questions.   He has this uncanny ability to understand what I am trying to say, even when NO ONE else in the WORLD knows what I'm trying to say when in comes to certain things.)  I have learned from the best and the key word here is I CAN STILL LEARN, so maybe there is hope and I won't spontaneously combust this weekend after all...but I do have my doubts.

(After reading the above paragraph post typing it, I think I need to take some form of medication to just calm down, wouldn't you say?  A large dart from and elephant gun might just do the trick seeing as I'm out of Pamprin and rum.)

I had such a terrible urge - no, a NEED - to call my friend Kathy in New York tonight.  I can't explain why I needed to, I just needed to and I learned a long time ago that if you NEED to talk to someone or have a gut feeling about something, likely as not you'd best just call or do it.  I called.  We had a nice chat and I felt so much better.  After I talked to Kathy, I talked to my daughter.  After my daughter and I talked, my BFF Vickie called.  I just knew she was going to call.  All in all, it was a very stress "relieving" type of evening considering what a tizzy I was in to begin with.  I am SO BLESSED with so many cool people in my life... Maybe with all that's going on, I just needed to remember I am the luckiest person on earth.  (Thank you all for reminding me!  Have I told you guys lately that I love you?)

April 17, 2009 - Ah, my 'BIG WEEKEND' - I have removed myself from it in my head.  It dawned on me that I'm treating like I treated giving birth - you sort of know you are going to experience something HUGE and since your brain cannot fathom it, you remove yourself to a safe spot over in the corner and just observe while core of you does the work.  Funny how this feels so big to me, but in the big picture of things, I'm just a tiny little spec of sand on a beach.  Still, I've been running around doing stuff this morning feeling as if I'll never come back to this house again - make sure the toilet paper is replace, clean the toilet and catch up on laundry and such.  Duh.

The band did a 'Flower Power' fund raiser, and offered bulbs and such for sale.  You know, the kind of bulbs for plants that non-horticulture types like myself cannot kill off just by opening the package - the kind of plants that will keep coming back even though you forget they are there.  The most I do every year to my yard is mow it and arrange the dog poop in a decorative pattern.  I am not nor do I ever intend to be someone who would landscape.   That is why I was so thrilled about these bulbs.  Throw 'em in and forget the bulbs!  My kind of plants! 

Well, they received the bulbs, and I was asking my son about them, "When will we get our bulbs?" and he said, "As soon as there's L."  I thought he mistyped (I was at work messaging him at home.)  "What the L!" I typed back, thinking I was being quite funny.  Response back from my son was, "???"  He didn't see my humor, and I didn't understand what he was trying to say.  It turns out that apparently the line that was for 'Espresso Geraniums' was line 'L' on the order form!   hahaha.  They did not come in with the over all order, so there is a delay in putting the orders together for delivery until those come in next week.  It is all so clear to me now.  What the L?

I just mixed up a batch of sugar water and will put my humming bird feeder out before I go to work today.  I know they are almost here as there are websites that track their flight back to Michigan and such.  I have taken down the bird feeder for seed feeding that was just supplying the rebel teenaged deer with prank material anyway, and will mount the sugar water.   I hope the deer don't like sugar water.  Sigh.  The other night when I was up working late, the dogs went into a frenzy of pacing and barking and the hair on their back and neck was spiked up and I thought, "Ah Ha!  The James Dean Rebel Deer are back and I will jump out the door and surprise them!"  So I got on my slippers and did just that, jumped out the door saying "Ah Ha!" but I was greeted by a wall of skunk smell instead of rogue deer.  The dogs had burst out with me in a valiant chest-out-and-barking kind of way, and didn't even seemed phased by the stench or the fact I was dry heaving because of it.  (When I was pregnant for my daughter in 1987, I had morning sickness 24/7 anyway plus I had the grand experience of having our dogs at the time take a direct hit of a skunk attack.  I was left trying to clean them up in the tub late at night with tomato juice and all sorts of things attempting to remove the stink.  The whole while I was puking in between applications of cleaning products.  I even used up a bottle of Jean Nate mist I had at the time.   Ever since then, just the smell of skunk makes me gag, but then again so does the smell of Jean Nate...)

As the dogs were barking and pacing about the pen and I was gagging to myself, all I could picture was the herd of eight rebel deer off hiding behind a bunch of pines nearby, laughing.  I could just see it - The older leader doe says, "Hey, come here you guys!  Ellie, go step on that skunk!  No really - it will be funny!  Just watch!" 

April 28, 2009 - My 'Big Weekend' came and went and now when I think back I say to myself, "Why were you so worried, you silly?!"  (I was worried at the time because I could have stopped one of the few companies in Michigan still up and running from, well, running...)  However, it went well, and the people on the help desk on the weekend at IBM are wonderful. 

I have scheduled the last of my vacation days for next week to use up what I have left before I "roll over" again on May 11th.  I plan on doing a lot of nothing.  Perhaps putting around the yard.  The poor yard is in dire need of putting.  I will plant the bulbs I got from the band fundraiser and mow and get some pansies to plant.   I am going to go to my Aunt and Uncles for lunch one of those days.  Just little things with no pressure and just for ME.  I deserve stuff JUST FOR ME.   (At least once in a great while.)  This week, however, is just normal work and on Friday night the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra will perform at our school.  Several of the brass section kids will perform with them on one song.  The band kids also have State Festival on Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon as well.  My wee one will be done blown out, he will.

We had storms over the weekend and there was much wind damage in town.  Lots of power outages and uprooted trees.  We just got rain and wind at our house, but no damage.  I am not ready for more damage yet.  I am willing to take turns when it comes to storm damage.   We're coming up on the 2nd Anniversary of our big wind damage of '07 (sounds dramatic, doesn't it..."Yeah, we survived the storm of aught 7...") which compelled us in a natural sort of way to get a new roof, new windows, and new siding.  

I finally scheduled a day for my class reunion.  Took me long enough.  Now lots of people won't be able to make it due to lack of money and/or lack of planning time.  Sigh.  I was a bad girl.  I wasn't going to do a reunion this year for our 30th, but many people were saying, "We need one!"  So I decided I would give them a day and time to be there and make it a "bring your own EVERYTHING" style picnic.  I have contacted the local newspapers and posted signs and various stores and will start sending out snail mail to those I can't get a hold of via email.  I think I'll plan the next one WAY in advance like a good reunion planner should.  It would be fun to have a nice 35th Reunion where we are planned out well in advance and could spend a weekend together in Hawaii or something, but I digress...

There were geese in my back yard last night, the little poopers that they are.  There is one bachelor Sandhill crane that hangs around out front ALL the time.  I do not lack for foul wildlife in my life.  I had my first humming bird as well!  Woot.  Not only do we have to worry about avian flu, now the swine flu and aren't we all having fun?   A show of hands for all this fun we're having....

April 29, 2009 - I called my brother last night to sing him a poor rendition of 'Happy Birthday' - his birthday is today, but I was not going to be up and about when he got up.  (He gets up quite early.)  He said he doesn't mind getting older, and I must agree.  Getting older is a good thing, really - except for all Rice Krispie noises we start to produce as we age.  I have learned so much and experienced so much and cannot even begin to explain the joys and awe I've felt over the years.  Learning rocks. 

I finally broke down and bought some of that CLR product I see on every other commercial on TV.  It's supposed to take care of Calcium, Lime, and Rust.  I even got some heavy duty rubber gloves and used a sponge, just like the lady on the TV.  (Our water table here is made of of one part water and 99 parts rust, and I was desperate to find something that would help me keep up with the build up of every known element from the periodic table on my bathroom walls and glass shower doors.)  I suppose that CLR would work fine if you started using it the day after you knew you had hard water, not 27 years later.  It took off a layer or two of the build up on the shower doors, but not all of it.  Perhaps I'll have to do many repeat cleanings with it.  Perhaps next time I won't cave in and buy stuff from TV advertisements just because I've seen them a million times.  I used to wonder how mass amounts of people could be swayed by one thing - (example that comes to mind was the Hitler era) - and now I know.  If you hear something enough times and stop thinking for yourself, you start believing what you hear.  If history has taught us anything it's that there is no one superior human race and no one superior cleaning product.

Last week I was talking to my friend Kathy, and we were discussing our thoughts on past memories, etc.   Sometimes the past holds some pretty devastating stuff that we would rather avoid.  I lamented to her that I wish I had gone in to the study of the brain, because it fascinates me so much.  The brain is so AWESOME yet so complicated.  Sigh.  Yet as much as the brain fascinates me there are times I have so much respect for it that it's probably just best to just walk away...

May 6, 2009 - This is officially Day Three of my vacation - and we will hereby refer to this entry as "What Sandy did on her Spring Vacation."  I had vacation days to use up because I roll over again and will have another 5 weeks of vacation come next Monday.  I've been at that company full time for 27 years (and a year + of time considered as 'temp'...)  Sigh.  My whole adult life spent in plastic.  I am sure many a collectible Barbie doll has said that as well...

Pre-Vacation duties (last Saturday) I wanted to mow the lawn.  I did the push mowing while my husband got the John Deere tractor ready for drive mowing.  He had her lubed up and the oil checked and off I went on the old John Deere.  We've had that tractor since 1987.  (As long as my daughter!)  That mower has been a durable, low maintenance machine if ever there was such a thing.  For 15 years of it's life we even used it to snow plow the drive way.  That tractor has stood up to a lot.  ("A lot" in this case means "me" - I put that mower through some tough times.   When I mow, I mow with such GUSTO that small children and animals will run at high speed in the opposite direction when they see me coming.)  To me, the first mow of the season on the Deere is called "mulch mowing."  I am the only one that calls it that, now that I come to think of it.  Most people would pick up sticks prior to the first mowing of the season, but not me.  I mulch the crap out of fallen branches.  I have found over the years that the John Deere and I have worked out many a family issue whilst I "mulch" my heart out.  "Mulch Mowing" and "Stupid Mole Hills" destruction is very good therapy for anyone, and I highly suggest it to work out mental issues you may have, but I digress...

(I believe I blogged years ago about the time I had PMS to the EXTREME and two doses of Pamprin Industrial Strength had done nothing to tame this she-beast, so not only did I mow my yard, I mowed the back half of my neighbor's yard without asking permission just so I didn't have to go back in to my house, because had I returned to my house at that point, people were going to be maimed and killed, and frankly I just didn't feel like going through the whole trial thing and jail time and such.  Just another example of how wonderfully therapeutic mowing can me.)

Back to Saturday - I almost got the front half of the lawn done when I noticed the grass was not flying any more and that the soothing sound of large chunks of debris ricocheting off of the neighbor's house was missing...  I got off the mower and crawled around the mower deck.  The belt had slipped off.  I drove her back up and parked her, waiting for my husband to come home and fix the belt.  I assisted in this act of restoring the belt, and as we were sprawled out doing this (not a pretty sight for two larger humans to be seen doing) we noticed the back right tire was very low on air.  My husband filled that tire.  I made it around the yard one more time before she was flat again.   Sigh.  He filled the tire up with 'fix a flat' to see if that would help, but to no avail.  I had to park her.  "I wondered why the mow lines were at a slant..." he mumbled.  "I found it quite decorative, personally!" I retorted. 

He found that the inside of the tire was so weather worn it looked like the view of the Grand Canyon from a plane.  He tried to get the tire off to replace it, but couldn't get it off the rim OR get the rim off of the axle.  He tried everything - Liquid Wrench, WD-40, Buttery Pam - but to no avail.  He came in after an hour or so and plopped in his chair.   "I can't get it off to fix it!" he said.  (OK, that's not what he really said, but younger people read this so I'll be nice and paraphrase.)  Those tires had lasted 21 years.  That whole tractor was a good damned tractor for 21 years!   We supposed that if she wanted to be put out to pasture now, that we'd honor her wishes since she earned it.

Sunday -  we went grocery shopping and got items to grill and had all the kids over for supper.  I think they should make the smell of grilling meat into a perfume.  Yum...  Fun was had by all and I will be pooping steak until next Thursday.

Monday - I planted the flats of flowers I had purchased.  I also found places to stick all the bulbs I bought from the band kid's "Flower Power" fund raiser.  I am no gardener.   I thought the bulbs sounded like something that would raise themselves and I couldn't kill.  I ordered pizza for supper as I was caked head to toe in mud and dirt.  Seriously, I am the female version of Pig Pen, I swear.  I was happy I got in some flowers in the ground, though.  That was something I had planned to do on this, the week of my vacation.

Tuesday - My wee one was sick.  He made it down the stairs and fell on to the couch.  I did what any good Mom would do - I felt his forehead and poked him with a stick to make sure he was breathing.  He had a temperature.  I told him to go get his pillow and blanket and curl up on the couch while I called him in 'sick' to the school.  He spent the day on the couch getting his temperature taken with a 'Spongebob' yellow thermometer while I forced him to drink tons of liquids.  I didn't do much of anything Tuesday except take two naps while he was sleeping.  (After all, this was a kink in my carefree 'alone time' week of vacation.  I didn't have a contingency plan for a sick kid....)   After my second nap, I got up and did laundry and dishes and normal chores.   Tuesday night was a fund raiser at a local restaurant, so my husband and I went and got food to bring home to the ill one and then went and purchased a new riding lawn mower to be delivered Wednesday morning.  (A Troy-Bilt, not a John Deere.  Sigh.  I wanted a Deere because nothing runs like a Deere, you know...)

Wednesday - The wee one passed the Spongebob Temperature Test and decided he'd go to school.  (Yesterday was the first sick day he had all year, now that I ponder it.)  I made him eat a real breakfast and drink juice.  I shoved a hanky in his pocket since snot was flowing from him like water over Niagara Falls, and gave him two Nyquil Day pills and sent him on his way.  After he left, I cleaned the top of the refrigerator and loaded the dryer.   I did dishes and then dragged all of my indoor plants (all spider plants mind you, since that is the only type of indoor plant I can't kill) outside to re-pot them.   My poor spider plants were root bound.  From three planters I ended up with six planters full of spider plants.  The rocks I had put in the bottom of the pots to help drain them were sucked up into the root systems of each pot!  Geez.  I guess you should re-pot plants sooner than every other decade or so...  The new mower was delivered by 10 a.m. (of course when I am covered head to toe in black potting soil.)   The delivery man was a former classmate of my husband.  I had not see him in YEARS.  (He was the guy my BFF had a major crush on, so as soon as he left I had to call her and tell her, "Guess who just delivered my mower?")  I had explicit instructions from my husband NOT to touch the new mower until he got to touch it first.  So I cleaned up my repotting expedition and moved the plants back into the house, took a shower, and went to fold laundry.  The laundry, however, was not dry.  I put it on another setting.  The heater wouldn't kick in.  I laughed out loud.  I couldn't stop laughing for a bit.  (I laughed because every year it seems something major breaks down or explodes around Easter time.  Easter came and went without fires or black smoke rolling out of an appliance and we didn't want to jinx ourselves so we just looked knowingly at each other and smiled and sighed a lot, thinking we'd gotten away with something extraordinary this year...)  So now not only was the dryer in dire straights, the lawn mower done died...double header!  Woot!  

After laughing like an idiot for a while, I got kind of depressed at the amount of money we were dolling out so I went and got my branch clipper thingy and went out to trim bushes.  I left huge piles of branches for the wee one to clean up once he feels better.  After branch reduction therapy, I came in and made spaghetti pie and a salad for supper, and then made egg salad for sandwiches tomorrow when I take lunch to my Aunt and Uncle.

As you can see, all in all it's been a productive week so far, minus the issues with mowers and dryers and sickness and such.  Now I'm off to haul in the clothes I have drying on the dog's fence.  Viva Vacations!

May 7, 2009 - There are turkeys acting all spastic in the field across the road.  Lots of them.  Some of the males are all puffed up (or the the females are having a really bad hair day) and they are quite noisy.  Then there are the Sandhill cranes off in the swamp on the other end of the field hollerin' about something (probably about the amount of noise the turkey group is making.)   In front of the field are geese throwing in their two cents.  Add this to the cacophony that is the rooster out back and the robins calling and the red winged blackbirds tittering...  I've come to the conclusion that Mother Nature, at times, could use a good conductor.

My master plan to lose 100 pounds during this, the week of my vacation, have gone terribly awry.  Still, we can all dream..  My favorite pair of jeans, which probably came out of the 1870s, finally blew a hole in the crotch area.  I noticed this when trimming branches yesterday only because I there were literally ants in my pants, and I couldn't figure out how the little boogers were getting in.  Sigh.  I loved those jeans.  I will still wear them around the yard, of course, but not in public.  The crotchless Levi look just isn't 'in' this season, although I bet the Village People might be able to use them...

I was going to dust the house yesterday, but decided to wait and do all house cleaning until this weekend, like I normally would do since technically I'm on "vacation."  The volcanic ash 'look' that is spewed throughout my shelves and table tops from excessive dust has it's own je ne sais quoi, um - decorative aspect to it.  Once I get through all the layers this weekend with an air hose and a gallon of Pledge, I will no doubt appreciate the detail of the wood even more.  

Today, I am also going to leave the house in exactly the same condition that the boys left it this morning when they left.  Just because Mom is on vacation doesn't mean they are off the hook on helping around here.  There, I am woman - hear me roar.  I will now meander off and beat my chest and pee on some trees and claim my right to be the alpha female during this, the week of my vacation.  :)

May 21, 2009 - Remember when you were a kid and you made a guitar out of an old cereal box with a hole cut in it and rubber bands strapped around the hole?  (OK, so I did that as a kid - I made makeshift musical instruments out of handy household items.  Leave it to me to assume EVERYONE did the same thing...) 

So let's say you never did make a fake guitar to amuse yourself as a child  - do remember when you would snap rubber bands at someone's head for fun?  Remember the sound they made?  (The rubber bands, not the wounded person in the line of fire.)  Last night the dogs made such a fuss to go outside at 11 p.m. for no other reason than to plop down on the ground like mentally challenged hand puppets and just lay there.  I decided I would sit outside with them for a few minutes.  It was a warm night, there were stars above, plus there were hundreds of "rubber band guitars."

Bull frog season!   Seriously - there were hundreds of calls going on over in the swamp!  It was quite amusing to me to hear all different types of rubber band calls.  Twangy loud throaty sounds.  It was a relaxing end to a long day.

The last days of my vacation were nice.  On that Friday I cranked up the "70s" station on the satellite TV and vibrated the house and the pets as I cleaned.  I cleaned all day.   I mopped, dusted, washed, scraped, and swept.  I worked very hard, but it was FUN since the music was loud and periodically I would dance if the mood hit me.  When I was mopping, the radio played the Village People's "YMCA" and after a quick check to make sure no one was at the door on my one side and there were no neighbors in view on my other side, I dropped the mop and did the whole YMCA routine.  I was so sore that night but I had a hoot. *I would like it noted here that right after I did all of this awesome deep cleaning and my house was shiny bright, the field across the road was dusted with marl and in a period of 48 hours my house went from the 'geez, did you guys survive a volcano blast or what' to 'my stars, I love your deep wood grain tones and shiny home' to 'holy crap, did you guys live through another volcano...' Sigh.

Work has been very busy.   I am always amazed that even when production is down and we're not making much money that the amount of work I have to do is still right up there to when we're over booked and booming.  I guess, depending on the job, it doesn't matter if you're doing it for one or a million - it's still work intense.  I am happy that I am working, however, so don't take any of the above as complaining!!!

The wee one leaves for Cedar Point tomorrow on a weekend band excursion.  He'll be gone until Sunday and get home in enough time to rest a bit and do two more parades for Memorial Day on Monday.   Tonight I have dinner with the 'girls' from High School, with the added bonus of seeing one of our classmates from out of town.  Sr. Marsia will be in from California.  It always makes me feel 'cool' sitting at at table with a full blown nun.  "Stand back, I have a Nun and I know how to use her!"

The other day when watching the television I noticed there were tons of commercials for insurance companies... for Geico insurance (where you can save money over everyone else if you compare it) then Progressive Insurance (who will compare your rates to all the top companies and save you big dollars) and then a few other insurance companies, all claiming the same thing - you can save hundred with them over other insurance companies.  If this were all true and no matter what insurance company you went to for car insurance could save you tons of money, and you kept going from one to another company,  wouldn't you eventually end up getting money back or creating a cosmic black hole or something?  These types of things perplex me.

May 26, 2009 - Ah, a nice weekend it was.   The kids were all over for a cook out on Monday.  Too many hot dogs were consumed.  One can only eat so many hot dogs, but I fear I pushed the envelope there.   Burp.

I have been enjoying my humming birds.  There is one bird that hangs out on the fence and then fights whoever flies up or past.  Seems a waste of time when there are eight different holes to feed out of and share from, but what do I know.  If I could fly like a hummingbird, no doubt I'd have to make split second decisions too, and perhaps all that sugar causes them to be spastic at times.  If you click on the little pics below you can see the bigger picture of the main dude. 

Other than the cookout, it was a quiet weekend.  I did absolutely nothing on Saturday, which seems to be the case lately.   The wee one was off on his trip to Cedar Point, leaving on Friday and returning on Sunday.  Both my daughter and youngest purchased themselves new cell phones last week.  They got a good deal by switching to Sprint from Nextel.  They were both THRILLED with their new phones.  They got them up and going on Wednesday of last week, and off the wee one went on his Cedar Point trip with new cell phone in hand.   (OK, anyone who has ever known a teenager KNOWS what is coming up next...)

I get a call on Saturday night from the wee one.  It's not from his phone number, it's from a friend's phone.   I answer in the traditional way, "Hello?  What did you do now?"  

"Hey, Mom - I just wanted to let you know I lost my new phone on the Cork Screw.  Must have flown out of my pocket..." 

Mind you, I was so upset that I couldn't speak for a bit.  I lost my voice.  My eyes fell out on the kitchen floor as well and rolled around for a while and my gut dropped out.  He had that phone four days and now it was in Lake Erie??  I tried very hard to calm myself. 

"OK, so - I am gonna just assume you're still on the line, OK?  I just wanted to tell you so you could stop service or something.  I am going to fill out a lost and found thing.  Can you let my friends know that my phone is gone and stuff?"

"Yes..." was all I could muster.

"OK, then - I'll see you tomorrow - love you, bye bye."

He was quite cocky on the phone, but I knew he would be very mad at himself eventually.  I knew he'd be suffering more from self inflected anger over his 'stupid' and I knew his friends would tease him.  I didn't have to dish out any statements of disgust as a parental unit in this case.  Sigh.  I called Sprint to let them know to suspend service on his phone.  Then I went to bed.  I could only think of was that seems to be the wee one's pattern.  New retainers lasted two days...cell phone lasted four days... Now that I ponder it, I made a lot of sounds that night similar to the sounds Charlie Brown used to make...

He returned home on Sunday and was so depressed he wouldn't speak.  He did get on line and update his Facebook status to read, "Yes, I really am that stupid" - and he fell asleep on the couch after berating me for NOT getting phone insurance on the new phone.  He wouldn't eat.   He just was silent and grumpy and every time he would go up to his room, we could hear things flying about.  Mind you, his laptop is "in the shop" as well, so the boy was totally cut off from the outside electronic world!  The horror!!!

My friend Effie offered up her extra cell phone for him to use until he saved up enough money for a new phone.    That was so kind of her, but any parent in their right mind would want the kid to suffer some to embed the lesson at hand, right?  I made him call Cedar Point lost and found on Sunday when he got back.  No phone. 

On Monday after he marched in two Memorial Day parades, I made him call the Cedar Point lost and found.  I wish I could have filmed the whole thing - here is a boy with his face on the floor one minute then suddenly he's ALIVE and laughing the next.  "They found it!  It's in the mail!!" he screamed.  Now, if it still works, that will be another story once it arrives here...

All in all, a wonderful weekend.  Now back at it, aye?  One day at a time is the best we can hope for.   One day at a time...

June 3, 2009 - Another month, ALREADY?  This cannot be happening and I refuse to believe it. 

All is well in Sandyland.  The wee one received his phone back from Cedar Point in spit spot condition.  Only one tiny little scratch on the thing.  It must have landed in a pile of grass.  As soon as we got it back, I sent Cedar Point Police Department "Lost and Found Division" a thank you card, and reactivated his cell service.  I also added phone insurance that the wee one will pay me for every month.  I found it quite entertaining to see the result of losing a new cell phone on my teenager... 

No cell phone;  Gloom, doom, depression, dark clouds, torrential rains, and damaging winds following him every where he went...his face was dragging on the floor collecting dust and dog hair and his body had gone into partial paralysis. 

Cell phone returns from vacation;   Happiness, butterflies, rainbows, sunshine, birds singing, lollipops, deer and chipmunks cleaning the living room, and a gleeful child who has treated his mother like gold ever since the incident took place. 

We also got his laptop back from HP.   We were excited about that as well, as he's been without that for weeks now.   We booted it up in anticipation.  Still the same issue - no monitor.   They had replaced the system board and a million other things according to the repair sheet.  Still, no monitor.  I got on line and hooked up with Gopididi or the like on their help line.  We discussed the issue.  His laptop is back in Texas hopefully getting repaired for real this time.  That thing has traveled more than I have in my lifetime...

Last night was the final Band concert for the High School.  I was out in the hallway selling things for fundraising and a herd of band girls came up in an excited,frenzied state because their friend had a tick attached to her neck.  "Get it off!  Get it off!"  Tracy held her hair while I removed the little booger.  It hadn't even hardly attached himself yet, so it was a easy removal.  I walked with the girls into the bathroom and we flushed him down the toilet and I made her wash her neck with soap and water.  It doesn't matter if it's your kid or not - if a kid has an issue, Mom mode kicks in.  No tick sucks blood out of my "kids" on my watch!

My daughter emailed me last night to share a text message her big brother had sent to her.  "Mom, it was hilarious!" she said.  The message from big bro was, "This is a test of the sibling message system. This is only a test. If this were a real message, an insult about your face would be included."

I do so love my kids :)

June 9, 2009 - Ah, life's little boo boos.  I learned a long time ago not to lose too much sleep over things you cannot control.  My husband was kind enough to point out that I had a flat tire this morning.  Kind of him, was it not?  For twelve seconds I was thinking, "Every time you broke down and every time you had motorcycle or car issues, I had to leave work and come save you ... yet you make no effort to help me?"  I stopped myself from that train of thought.  What if I was alone?   I would have to help myself, now wouldn't I?  So I used up the little bit of 'fix a flat' that we had and filled her with air.  I only live 3 miles from the dealership.  Once I am sure she is holding air for any length of time, I will take her in and drop her off.  Sigh.  I printed off a coupon for an oil change as well, since I'm there anyway... I found the culprit;  A screw has proudly embedded itself in my tire.  Takes the term, "Boy, you're screwed!" to a whole new level. 

My son then pointed out that the hair dryer no longer worked.  "Mom, you can't dry your hair this morning..." he announced in a somber, 'I'm-so-sorry-for-your-loss' kind of way.  The passing of a hair dryer is a sad time, I must admit.  Sigh.  He uses it every day, too.   His curly locks will go spastic now just like mine until I can replace the hair dryer.  Until then, we'll be forced to hang our heads out the windows of the car.   Woof.

Nothing money won't fix, any of it.   However, money is in short supply.  I will do what all Americans are doing right now - shuffle the bills and figure out a way.  There is always a "way."  There is always light at the end of the tunnel, even it the tunnel gets longer and longer...

School will be over this Thursday for the wee one.  We will be studying tonight for exams, no doubt.  Studying is always fun and for me, a learning experience beyond my wildest dreams.  Who needs TV when you can spend several hours finding out you know NOTHING compared to a 10th grade physics student who paid little to no attention in class for the past so many months?  Sigh.   Life - not so much REALITY as it is ACTUALITY!  (OK, so I stole that from TruTV.  Sue me.)

June 13, 2009 - Apparently my ability to let life's little boo boos roll off my back like so much rain on a duck has failed miserably.  I decided that I couldn't sleep tonight until I talked to someone but since no one is awake, I'll type.  It's 12:39 a.m. on Saturday morning...

Got my tire plugged up and fixed on Tuesday only to find out I am in dire need of tires over all.  That will be next on the 'wish' list.  I wondered why I was hydroplaning so much during the last rainstorm!   Lack of treads will do that to a car. 

The wee one's physics exam didn't go so well, either.  He got his first official 'F' on an exam.  Sigh.  I ended up NOT studying with the boy because he was studying (so he says) with two of his friends.   I could hear them bouncing questions off each other when he was upstairs.  I believe now that studying for him only works if Mom helps him study since he has to explain so much to me that I don't understand he's bound to learn or re-learn!  Sigh.   He ended up with a C- in his physics class.  Enough to allow him to live another day, but barely.

Today is the Vicksburg Old Car Festival.   However, I won't be going.  Seems that we're due to start a project on Monday for an existing customer and no one at work bothered to tell us that is was going to launch on Monday, so the work for set up and such has to be done this weekend.  I was quite angry over that.  I am still angry over that.  To be quite honest, I've been angry all week about everything!!  I know it's due to my 'monthly' - this one and last month's cycle have been the worst in my 48 years on earth.  I don't think I've ever felt this much rage and anger over EVERYTHING.  I get even more angry when I know this emotional mind set not going to last and I have every mental capacity to fight the anger - BUT I CAN'T.  Sigh.  Talking to and reasoning with my brain has not worked, and normally I have a good rapport with my brain.  This week, however, the damned thing changed the locks and forgot to leave a number where it could be contacted.  I have had to resort to taking Pamprin in large doses and sleeping just so innocent bystanders do not get stared at with malice.  I have never wanted to be the type of woman that goes psycho once a month,  but these last two months I could have been a poster child for the show "Snapped." 

I get angry when I can't control my anger.  Quite the Catch 22, aye?  I went out and chopped up a bush that is in the yard tonight.  The original intent was to trim it and by trimming it I could relax a bit and let off steam, but now the bush looks like Don King on a bad hair day.  I made the wee one go rake up the debris I had strewn all over.  Ug.

There, maybe now I can sleep a little.  Typing to myself in my blog seems to help a tiny bit.  I am off to snooze the sleep of a bitchy woman.  I can't wait for the real me to come home!

June 15, 2009 - Ah, finally - the anger is gone!  This being a 'girl' stuff is for the birds.  If men had to go through what females have to go through (emotionally) the earth would be a charred ball of ruin floating in space by now.   Sigh. 

I was SO HAPPY to finally be allowed back in to my own brain and consult with the control room up there...
"What the hell was that all about!?  Why did you guys lock me out?!!   You had the 'anger' switch on FULL POWER!!!"

"We're not sure what went wrong there, aye... There was this technical glitch and then we had to reboot several times and we just thought it best if you stayed away while we cleaned things up!"

"You could have at least sent a memo to me or something!"

"Um, printer was down, too..."

I got my project for work figured out yesterday, finally!  Took me all weekend.  I had to teach myself, which is hard when your own brain is ignoring you.  I went through several test scenarios and it flowed well.  I emailed the people who will be involved and gave instructions NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING until I train them.  We'll see how this goes this week.  I'm sure we'll be fine.  My husband mowed the yard while I worked.  I was ever so grateful for that since the torrential rains last week had caused the grass to grow several feet in some places and there were pterodactyls flying all over the place and volcanoes spewing forth... I am just glad he went out and tamed the yard.  I was just about to suggest it when he just got up and did it.  Phew.

Now, I'm off to type up a chore list for my homebound 16 year old wee one.  Must keep the boy occupied whilst he's on summer vacation, yes? 

June 19, 2009 - I was gently wakened from  a deep sleep this morning at 4:30 a.m. by a very loud BOOM and then several cats clinging to my face.   There was a storm a comin' and the lightening bolt that hit just outside the bedroom window to announce said storm was enough to scare the cats who apparently were sleeping with me.  Sigh.  I would have much rather stayed in bed and slept with the sound of the rain and thunder, but it's hard to sleep when fur is covering both breathing holes and claws are digging into the softer parts of your facial muscles.   My son came downstairs as well, and we all just sort of sat here, listening to the thunder boomers for a while.  Once the worst of it passed, the wee one went back up to bed.

The rain is still coming down and more storms are coming across the Lake.  Should be nice wet morning for all in Southern Lower Michigan.  The dogs won't go out and potty, because they are spoiled rotten and don't like getting their fur wet.  (I doubt the lightening and thunder have anything to do with that decision on their parts.)  I know my dogs - THEY MUST HAVE TO POOP BY NOW!!  I have been trying to encourage them to just run out, squat, and come right back in, but they look at me as if to say, "You go out there and squat and be a lightening pole, little Missy!!  We're dogs, but we're not DUMB!!" 

I made two strawberry rhubarb pies last night, or at least attempted to.  They both ran over and smoke was billowing out of the oven.  (A pie is always good, they say, if it runs over and causes all the smoke alarms on the street to go off loudly.)  I made the pies for Father's Day - one for my husband and one for my Uncle Lorin.  My husband had a piece this morning of his, and it was quite runny.  I didn't use enough congealing flour power.  I should have added tapioca...oh well.  He said it was delicious, nonetheless, and had ANOTHER piece after the first, so it must be OK.  I do not like rhubarb pies in any form, so I am no judge.  If he doesn't die by tonight, then it should be OK to take Uncle Lorin his pie tomorrow, right?  My sister and I are going to go have lunch with my Aunt and Uncle and then clean their apartment. 

Nothing really exciting happened this week, except I woke up breathing each day, so I have that going for me.  Our oldest is taking his Dad and the family out to dinner Sunday, so I won't have to cook!  I have that to look forward to.  If it's rainy all weekend, I won't have to worry about mowing, either.  All in all, it should be a very nice relaxing weekend for all.   Viva Friday!

June 25, 2009 - On the way home from work the other night, there was a white SUV headed south as I was driving north.  I see no driver in the SUV, as the windshield is one of those darker kinds, but as I get a bit closer - up pops a Shih Tzu doggie with it's hair up in a bow and it looks like the doggie is the one who's driving the SUV.  The sight made me laugh out loud.  Hurray for the little things.

No one died from my pies.  They were not too bad, actually.  I, after 48 years, had a piece of strawberry rhubarb pie.   It was very good.  I wonder why I never tried it before?  Cleaning was fun with my sister.  Much laughing took place as we talked with my Aunt and Uncle and cleaned.  Why is it always so much more fun to clean other people's stuff than it is to clean your own stuff?  This fact has always amazed me.  Maybe it's because you leave while it's still clean and feel a sense of satisfaction as opposed to your own house where you clean and then watch the family trash it afterwards.  I should do a series like that on History Channel called "Life After Cleaning." (Cut to narrator - "Once the dusting is over, the dogs decide they will wrestle like pack animals and a blanket of hair covers everything, leaving little proof there was once a lemony-pledged wood grain finish anywhere in the house..." or "The toilet is clean and the original porcelain white shines brilliant in the sunlight, however, several upright primate males will wander in mark their territory...")  Sigh.

It's been quite warm here the last two days - almost summer like.  The older I get the less I like extreme ANYTHING.   Oy Vay.  I honestly think all females of our species DO turn into a version of the cartoon character 'Maxine" eventually.  Walking around in bunny slippers and complaining a lot appeals to me at this point in my life.

Last Saturday my wee one and I were headed out to the car to go to his friend's graduation party.  I told him to tie his shoes before we got in the car.  "Unless you still don't know how to tie your shoes..." I said in a cocky "Mom Burned You Good" kind of way.  After we left the drive way he announced, "Did you know I didn't learn how to tie my shoes until second grade?"  (Apparently a friend of his taught him.)  "You guys didn't teach me how to tie my shoes!  Oh, and I had to learn how to ride a bike from Curtis!  You guys never taught me how to ride a bike!"  (Curtis is the next door neighbor's son.)  I was quiet for a while in the car as I reached back in my brain for the memory of all this.  I panicked for a moment.  Maybe we didn't teach him all of these things!  I seriously thought that maybe, since he was the youngest and had two older siblings, we just left him to his own devices and blew him off when it came to basic child rearing instructional practices.  I couldn't remember, at that moment, if we HAD or HAD NOT taught him ANYTHING!  All in a matter of seconds I went from panic to feeling like the worst Mom in the universe to wondering how he turned out so well considering we just let him raise himself and all... when suddenly a memory flashed into my mind.  It was a memory of me trying to teach him how to tie a shoe.   I was behind him and taking him through the motions of tying his shoes.  He was saying, "Why can't I just have Velcro shoes, Mom?  This is TOO hard!"  

"Wait a minute, you turd head.  I tried to teach you how to tie your shoes!  I remember now!"  Many memories came flooding back after that.  He would beg for Velcro shoes.  He would shove his laces inside of his shoes to avoid tying them!!  He just laughed at me.   "However, I will admit, I have no memory of you and your bike and such..."

It turns out, he claims, that one day he wanted his training wheels off his bike, but his Dad wouldn't do it and said "No!" so in his defiance he just went next door and told Curtis that he wanted to ride a bike without training wheels.  So Curtis, being a year older and wiser than him, took him out to the back yard where there was lots of grass to wipe out in and let him practice on his bike.  "Oh, so you disobeyed us to learn how to ride a bike, aye?" I asked.  Again he laughed, as he enjoyed this whole thing of the making Mom worry and panic and doubt and pushing Mom's buttons.  "Yeah, I had to practically raise myself, Mom.  You guys did nothing.  It's your fault I wet my bed 'til I was in sixth grade, too!" he laughed and sputtered.  He was enjoying the torment of Mom way too much.  "You, my son, are a butt munch!" I said, ending the conversation.  "Yeah, pretty much..." he responded.

July 5, 2009 -Some pictures from our Fourth of July weekend.   If you click on the little picture, it will show you the bigger picture.

It was a fun weekend.  On Friday night my whole brood met and had dinner with two of my sister-in-laws and brother-in-law and my Mom-in-law.  That is always a hoot and the kids were very entertaining.   We were all quite loud so I left a big tip!  After that, we drove over to Battle Creek to see the balloon launch but the wind was too strong and we decided they wouldn't launch that night (being the aviation experts that we are) and drove to Galesburg to get ice cream (being the junk food experts that we are.)  The balloons never did go up Friday night due to high winds.  Drat.  I had hoped to catch a nice mass balloon launch once this weekend... 

Saturday, the parade in Schoolcraft was nice and there was an A-10 flyover!  Woot.  Love those loud jets!!  I screamed and clapped my hands.  At least I wasn't alone - my daughter's boyfriend's Mom also screamed and clapped for the jets.  (The jets flew BACK over us - double awesome.)  I forced my wee one to march in the parade.  It was voluntary to march and he was not in the mood for volunteering, so I pulled the parental card and told him he WAS going to MARCH in the PARADE on Saturday because "he owed his Country that much..." The parade was two hours long, almost.  Lots and lots of entries.    

We came back home and had a barbecue.   We also had naps.  Then off to fire works in Schoolcraft.  That is always a hoot just sitting back and watching the interaction between my kids.  We got to sit next to my friend, Judie, who was there with her son.  The fireworks were good, and the ride home was fun, and all in all it was a very nice weekend.  Contented sigh.  

Thursday we were 'let out early' from work, which they will do at times when it's a Holiday, so I ran up to Discount Tire and got four new tires.  I had been riding on two tires that had 2/32 of an inch tread!   Yikes.  I was pushing my luck...riding on borrowed time.  Last time it rained I was the only person on the road skating helplessly in my car since I had absolutely NO traction.  Sigh.  I feel ever so much better now that I got new tires, even if my bank account does not like it.

July 9, 2009 - I did something I have not done in YEARS last night - I drank four beers in a row.  I have not done this since 1998.  After that hops and barley fest, I went to bed.  (I woke up to pee a lot through out the night and could swear I could hear my bladder cussing out my brain for allowing that beer fest to take place...)

There were lay offs at work yesterday and pay cuts and general sadness.  I thought that when one had seen the ups and downs of a business they've spent their whole adult life working for that one would be immune to it, but that is not true.  The emotional part still rears it's head.  Oh, sure - we carry on - but there is the initial sadness.

Of course we are all grateful our facility is still up and running and not closed like so many others in the country and yes - everyone who remains is grateful to have a job, but I think the initial shock of losing loved coworkers allows any one to drink four beers in a row and go to bed, don't you?   Ug. 

I am happy I got tires when I did, is all I gots to say about that...

July 13, 2009 - Been pondering how to cut expenses to match the 20% pay cut I got.   I have a list of "first things to go" and will begin deploying them this week.  Land line phone is first, then we'd work our way down the ladder of stuff - internet/cable, motorcycle going back - stuff like that.  We can do this.

My daughter went with her boyfriend to Chicago this weekend.  His band had a gig there.  I have not heard from her yet since that adventure, but have not been contacted by any law enforcement agencies to identify remains, either, so I'll assume all is well. 

Saturday my oldest son came down and took us all to supper.  We made the wee one drive, as he wants to take his road test soon.   (His brother bought a car for him, although the wee one has to pay big brother back.  Now that there is a car in the drive way that is HIS, he is ever so anxious to get his license.)  The ride to and from dinner was a blast.  I laughed so hard I wet myself.  We made the wee one drive us home so I could fix that issue, and then we were off again to practice parking at the Middle School.  My oldest and I were 'orange cones' while Dad stayed in the car to give advice.  I had a lovely talk with my fellow cone while we stood there.  There was a football game going on at the stadium at the High School so we riffed off the announcer and when they called the 50/50 raffle ticket winner, my son shouted, "I won!"  Smile.  After about an hour of being an orange cone, I decided it was time to try the real thing on real streets.   After the practice driving, we came home and talked until almost midnight.  It was a fun Saturday. 

Now all I need to do is schedule his road test.  (I told him he would have to pay for it since I will be ever so short of monies.  He was mad until his older brother said that he had to pay for his road test, his insurance, his gas, etc.  "Reality sucks!" his big brother said in a wise, old man sort of way, "Get used to it...")

Now the wee one is upset since corn detasseling has not started yet, and he figures if it keeps up at this rate, that he will only get one week of work before band camp.  His master plan was to earn enough in the corn fields to pay for his car.  Things don't always go as we plan...

The wee one's girlfriend came over for a few hours last night.  I said she could come over on the stipulation that those two walked the dogs.  They walked the dogs for about 45 minutes.  When they brought the dogs in she was scolding my son, "The reason they are so wild when you take them for walks is because YOU DON'T TAKE THEM FOR WALKS!  You have to pay more attention to them and walk them more!"  (Her I like.)  She said that she told my wee one that every time she comes over, they are taking the dogs for a walk.  Smile.   

July 20, 2009 - So those of you that know me know I spend a lot of time "looking up" and admiring the stars.  I call it "dog poop pen astronomy" since most of my observations take place out back while I'm waiting for the dogs to do what dogs do best.  This weekend I was waiting for the dogs to do "their thing" and looking up at the sky.  It was a cloudy sky.   Nothing to look at, really, so I was not quite sure why I was still looking up.   There was a bright streak across the southern sky, and for a split second I say to myself, "Meteor!"  My brain, who thinks it's always right, corrected me.   "Woman - it's CLOUDY out!  How in the sam hill could you see a falling star?"  "Um..." I started to defend myself.  "It was a kamikaze firefly, not a rock from space!  Sometimes I wonder about you!"   My brain can be quite blunt at times... 

I am over the initial depression I suffered the last two weeks due to work or lack thereof.  I now have no feelings about work.  I feel like 80 percent of the state of Michigan feels - "We're doomed, Oh Well."  After 30 years at that place, the cheerleader in me has finally been beaten down and left to die out behind the bleachers.  Ugh.  I have been making that sound a lot under my breath - "Ugh." 

Warning to the greater Tri-State area - my wee one takes his driver's road test in early August.  You have been duly warned...

July 22, 2009 - Ah, forced day off from work today.  I actually slept in until 9:30 this morning!  Seriously!  How did that happen?  Awesome.   My husband must have shut the bedroom door before he left, as it was shut when I woke up.  He is nice.  That way I couldn't hear the phone or the dogs or anything.  I have no huge plans today except to do only what pleases me.  Right now what pleases me is to blog and sip on my coffee.  It's peaceful and quiet all around my immediate area.

I just got in from dead heading my flowers. The bees were buzzing and the birds were singing. All was as it should be. There is something therapeutic about dead heading flowers - plus I'm a flinger.  I fling the dead heads where ever they may fall.  I don't put them nicely in a bucket and throw them out, heck no!  I fling the debris everywhere.  Maybe that's the therapeutic part?

Those of you who follow this blog and have followed for centuries and generations will know I have a cat named Muffy.  He is the oldest cat out of all three of my cats.  Muffy is a male, despite the poor choice of name I came up with for the poor thing.  (I had no clue how to tell a female kitten from a male kitten at the time I brought it home and the scared kitten was stuck to my face in the car out of fear, so I named my little black and white kitty after my old black and white cat from my pre-teen years, Muffy Puffy.  The original Muffy Puffy was a female.  However, the kitten that got named after MP happened to be male, but since we had been calling Muffy 'Muffy' for so long, 'Muffy' is the name that has stuck.)   But I digress...

Muffy comes from a long line of certified barn cats.  They were hunters for supper.  Muffy has been a hunter from day one.   Muffy can take down larger beings than himself, or did in his glory days.   Muffy is now quite old, heavens - I can't remember how old.  I think he's 14 years old now?  Anyway, Muffy has survived getting hit by a car twice and a run in with something MUCH bigger than him another time.  He has a hip that has been out of place since the last car accident and will cry to have people lift him up to higher levels of the house.  Muffy has had a full life, to say the least.  He still has the 'barn cat' mentality, and on Father's Day he attempted to bring in a ground squirrel (which was still clinging to life, mind you) for my husband, which was very sweet of Muffy, but we declined the gift.  (Muffy ended up eating it under my car...)   Muffy is also a guard cat - he knows our yard perimeters, and enforces said invisible lines.  He has protected our yard from intruders for years - from chasing horses out to chasing dogs and other creatures out of the yard in the dark of the night.   If anyone pulls in to the drive way, Muffy will insist on going outside to spray down the tires of the offending vehicles. 

Muffy is de-clawed on his front paws. This happened because he was stalking my daughter when she was young, and wouldn't let her pass down the stairs without dragging himself down her poor legs.  He literally would stalk her and attack her.  She would cry from upstairs, "Mom, Muffy won't let me out of bed!"  I eventually took him to the vet for psychological evaluation.   "Why is this cat attacking my daughter?" I whined to our vet.   "Because your daughter is acting like prey and he's a cat that attacks prey - so tell your daughter not to act like prey!"  So besides teaching my daughter not to act like a victim, I also decided to have his front claws taken off just in case.   I have always been opposed to that type of cat surgery, but after seeing the scratches and scars on my daughters wee little legs...well, the cat lost that battle.  

Now, back to last night after that whole enthralling history of Muffy, the cat... We are getting in to the car to leave, when Sadie, the next door neighbor's doggie, walks across our back yard.  Muffy was going in to the house as my son held the screen door open, but he saw Sadie and faster than a speeding bullet there went this streak of black and white heading straight for Sadie.  (Sadie has had run-ins with Muffy before.  Muffy will flail poor Sadie and pound her mercilessly with his front paws.)  Sadie saw Muffy coming, and decided to just stop and fall to the ground.  Muffy was all over Sadie like flies on honey.   They rolled all over the yard with Sadie yelping and Muffy flailing.  My son made a mad dash to break it up.  He chased Muffy back around the house, giving Sadie time to run home.  Muffy was just doing what Muffy does well, defending his property.   Muffy walked in to the house after my son rounded him up as if nothing unusual had happened.  He was just doing his job, after all...

After I got back to the house, I called the neighbors to make sure Sadie was OK.  Ron said that she was fine and out in the back yard lounging.  I apologized profusely.  Ron said that he is hoping that Sadie, knowing what Muffy can do and Muffy being black and white and all, will think that all black and white creatures are killers, and will stay away from skunks - so maybe it was a good thing that all these years Muffy has given Sadie grief.  (Sadie has never been hit by skunk spray in her 8 years on this Earth and I would like to think we have Muffy to thank for that...) 

This Saturday is my 30th High School reunion.  I didn't plan much this year.  I just gave them a date and said, "Bring your own EVERYTHING."  There is no monies for a reunion and I didn't have the funds to get stuff started, so I just picked a date.  Plop.  Deb paid for the picnic area for the class, which was sweet of her.  I did it all on line mainly, and put posts in the local papers and hung up signs.  I have gotten calls from classmates who just heard about it, and they were upset because they didn't get notified.  I explained I did it on line, and have been lectured that many people don't have access to the internet.  Sigh.  Oh well.  I will continue to host the website for our class and herd people together on Facebook as a group, but I doubt I'll ever plan another one.  Plus, they predict rain for Saturday.  UG!   There is no alternate location in the event of rain.  I know how to fix that though - if you water your flowers when they need it, it will rain.  If you DON'T water your flowers when they need it because the weather forecasts indicates rain, IT WON'T RAIN.  So by scientific deduction, if my flowers are wilting on Friday and it's suppose to rain on Saturday and I DON'T WATER THEM, it will not rain on Saturday.   Problem solved...

July 23, 2009 - I got a phone call last night from my BFF Vickie.  I knew she would call because yesterday when I was blogging I was thinking of her A LOT and almost ended my posting with, "Vickie, CALL ME!"  Of course, I didn't have to end it that way as she always knows when I need her to call.  We have an underlying connection of the soul, I swear. 

How I feel about Vickie goes beyond friendship.   Friendship isn't even a good word for it.  Instead of saying "Vickie is my best friend"  I think it's more apropos to say "Vickie is MINE."   There are no words to properly fit the way I feel about her and me and "us" as friends.  Seriously, I feel a such a connection to her - NO, wait - not even a connection per say:  She is worked into my very fiber of being.   She was always there even before I knew her in person and will always be there.   It's plain weird, but I like that feeling and I love her.

July 26, 2009 - Ah, the weekend is drawing to a close, and I must say, it's been a fun one. 

My son was detasseling corn on Friday.   Normally the detasseling company he works for has very accurate field end times on their website.  I kept an eye on the page all day at work so I'd know approximately when I'd have to leave and go get him and run him home.  At first their web site said they'd be done at 12:30, then 1:00, then 2:00.  It stayed at two p.m. for the longest time, so I just left work for "lunch" to go get him at around 2:15.  They didn't come and didn't come.  I drove around our beautiful town for quite a while.   I called back to work and asked one of my coworkers to check the website for me again, to make sure what it said.  "Still says 2:00 pm field end time..." I was told.  They didn't end up pulling in to the High School parking lot until 3:00 p.m.  That left me 10 minutes to get my son home and get back to work.  (Of course, I did not speed or the like.  I would never do that!)  

OK, so while I was speeding down 'TU' Avenue to get to my road, out from the woods came a herd of rogue pigs.  Seriously.  Seven pigs were emerging from the woods next to the road.  I reduced speed and told my son, "Get a picture of this, in case they kidnap us and dump our bodies in the woods!"  I had to end up stopping, as the pigs would not let me pass.   They surrounded the car and bumped the car and one huge piggy came up to my open window to sniff me.  I sniffed him.  I am pretty sure, out of the two of us, I smelled much nicer.  I eventually just put my hazard lights on, since I wasn't going anywhere.  The pigs did not leave us until the next car came up behind me and they decided to go surround that car.  "Floor it!" my youngest said.  I did.  I was late getting back from lunch to work.  At least I had pictures to prove where I was!  I couldn't stop laughing about it.  When I got back to work I had to call Vickie upstairs to tell her.  (We've shared odd pig sightings together before, so I was sure she'd appreciate this...)  Soon the emails started coming in...   Stacey sent a note that said, "Had you hit them going at a high rate of speed, you would would have had (and then she had a picture of PIGS IN SPACE from the Muppet show)" and Wendy sent me a picture of my new 'ride' - which was a photo of someone who had converted a PT Cruiser into a Pig Car.  I got up to go to the bathroom and caught Vickie putting up a 'PIG CROSSING' sign outside my door.  We laughed and laughed.  We all needed a good laugh.  "I thought Vickie said you were accosted by pigs on "PU"Avenue...." Stacey said.  Too funny...

I had a scratchy throat on Saturday morning.  I just assumed there was something stuck there from breakfast since I sometimes don't chew as a human should, but ignored the irritation since I had lots to do.   Saturday was luggage check in day for Band Camp for the wee one and then off to my 30th High School class reunion.  It was small, but ever so fun.  Rain came and went and came and went, but mostly it was sunny in the afternoon.  My oldest son got out of work at five and came to the reunion, too.  (I love that my kids don't mind spending time with their old Mom.  My daughter would have been there too had she not had previous plans to spend time with some friends at the beach.)  I can't tell you how fun it was to talk with these former classmates!!  It was a relaxed and very wonderful time.  I attempted to drink beer during the reunion, but am quite sloppy at it.  I used to be quite a good drinker and have three children to prove that, but I've lost my grace when it comes to that sort of thing.  Still, I gave it my best effort.  My youngest was my designated driver. 

When I got home, I was hoarse from talking so much (I thought) but my throat and ears also kind of hurt.  I got a flashlight and looked down my throat.  There were raised white spots!  "Oh No!" I croaked.  "Oh, great Mom - you exposed all those people to your diseases and you drank out of my juice bottle !!" my youngest said.  "Thanks a lot!  Now I'll no doubt get sick during band camp!"  He wasn't really upset with me, but he gave me lots of grief. 

All in all it was a nice weekend.   I am very content tonight.  Now I'm off to post some pictures of the reunion on Facebook!

July 28, 2009 - Here is a picture of some glads from my garden.  (I use the term 'garden' loosely -  what I mean to say is my little 2' x 2' flower patch that I threw together in twelve seconds and ignore most of the time and am amazed that it even produced weeds let along flowers...)

I love gladiolus flowers.  Contented sigh.   My intent this year was to let them be outside in the wild so the neighbors could enjoy them, but as soon as one blooms, I am out there killing it to bring it in the house for ME.  I am basically selfish when it comes to gladiolus flowers.

I got an early morning doctors appointment yesterday, since I didn't want strep throat and personally hate strep throat with a passion and I just don't do well with strep throat at all, so to the doctor I went.   I don't have strep throat.  I do have a sinus infection.  I felt better that I didn't have to alert all my former class members that I may have infected them with some vile disease.  I am pretty sure I didn't wipe boogers on anyone at the reunion, so all should be well.  I am now on antibiotics to clear up any infected cavities in my head.  My ears are clogged as well.  What?

Now I will demonstrate the difference between the male gender and the female gender:
Yesterday, I sent a text email to my son at band camp and asked, "Are you OK?   Did you get there OK?  Are you using sunscreen?  Are you drinking water?   Are you behaving?  Did I mention sunscreen?"  (You know, the worried Mom thing - I babbled on for quite a while asking him questions.)  I also sent a text message to my daughter that said, "Are you OK?"  (She had gotten sunburned at the beach on Saturday and was in lots-o-pain from that.)  I had asked my son sixty questions and all I got back via text was one word - 'yes!'  I had asked my daughter one question and got back six text messages.  Smile.  God Bless the difference between the genders!

I also find it very humorous that this week (a week my husband and I have ALL ALONE with NO KIDS) the best thing we've come up with so far to do 'special' is eat all the vegetables that the wee one doesn't like - "Oooo, we can have brussels sprouts!" or "Oh, Baby - Lima Beans!" and the occasional, "I want it bad - CABBAGE!"  Duh.  We're old.  

August 3, 2009 - Ah, Monday - and this the first day of my vacation.  I have nothing planned whatsoever, to be honest.  Perhaps I will mow.  Yes, I will mow.  That is what I will do on this, the first day of my vacation.  The majority of the yard is quite orange and crispy from the lack of rain, however, so mowing shouldn't take that long.  (The parts in the shade that have remained green and lush like a tropical rain forest will no doubt take hours, however, since I've not mowed them in weeks and it will take a while to get the monkeys out of there...)

The wee one has returned home from an exhausting but fun week at Band Camp.  He looked so HEALTHY when he got back.   He lost 5 pounds while at camp.  They worked HARD.  "I think this was the hardest band camp EVER.." he said, but in a happy voice since he had fun as well.  His laundry is caught up...his stinky band camp laundry.  "My butt tends to sweat a lot..." he mentioned as we were all covering our noses when he opened up his suitcase (although the dogs thought it was the sweetest thing they had ever smelled!)  Today he is back to work in the cornfields.  I will be taking him to the corn bus shortly to report for duty...

Son has been deposited at the meeting place for corn detasseling.  The Eagle has landed, over.  He seemed so eager to get back into the fields.  (OK, I'm being facetious - he didn't speak all morning and yawned a lot and made several grunting noises in response to my questions in the car...)

I wonder how early one can start mowing their lawn around these parts without waking up people in a rude way?  Is there actual lawn mowing etiquette rules?  It's seven a.m. - is that too early?  Oh sure, the grass is still dew covered but my theory here is - the wetter the lawn, the less pollen like substances will fly into my already snotty nose.  I am not sure if my sinus infection is better or not.  Hard to tell.  I don't feel 'sick' anymore, like last Monday - but I am producing large amounts of snot (above average levels) so is it getting better and breaking up or is it getting worse and my brains are leaking out?   I'm pretty sure my brains are leaking out.

The wee one ruined my one good pair of tweezers on Saturday night.  He was trying to get a knot out of a string in his shorts, and used MY TWEEZERS to pry on the knot.  I did not realize he was using my tweezers until later, when I went to pluck and they were warped beyond the ability to use them.  I was quite upset.  (I can revert to my natural werewolf faced self in a matter of hours without the proper tools.)  Sigh.  I found an old pair in a junk drawer (thank goodness) and have been using those, but they lack the gripping power of my now dead pair.  Ug. 

So far I've gotten one load of laundry done - the dog poop piles picked up - and NOW I think I'm really going to go out and start mowing.  If the neighbors are still asleep, I will apologize to them when they come out of their homes throwing things....

August 5, 2009 - The lawn mowing was complete on Monday in record time.  (Lack of cutable grass really speeds up the process.)  It looked like rain on and off all day, but we got nothing.  I did have a posse of sorts while mowing out back - six barn swallows or purple martins (wasn't quite sure which) were following me the whole time.   I am always amazed by their flying ability.  They love that a mower will stir up bugs for them to swoop in and eat, and I am all for the 'circle of life' sort of thing when it comes to birdies and buggies.  Even dragonflies would follow me after a spell, waiting for bugs.  It was, to say the least, entertaining for me since I am easily entertained...

I even swept out my car on Monday, in anticipation of the wee one's driving test today.  However, I think I will have him swing by a car wash before we go up there for the test.  The cat paw prints and Muffy's sliding cat butt prints on the windshield might impede is line of vision.   Sigh.  I can't express the feeling I have over this.  On one hand, my baby is getting older and he'll be off living his own life too soon, but on the other hand, MY BABY IS OLDER AND OFF TO LIVE HIS OWN  LIFE SOON!!  Plus, sitting in the back seat without the ability to react or talk during a kid's road test is HARD on a Mom!!  Just last night I rode in the back and made several 'Mom' like noises when he turned left and forgot to signal and...

My daughter was riding up front and said, "You can't do that tomorrow, Mom!!"  I know - I have to remain silent and I will have to take a book to 'read' even though you don't read, you just look at the same paragraph for an hour.  (Of course, that is if he makes it off the parking lot test part of parking and stopping and such...)  That is my only goal for today besides breathing and stuff - get the boy tested.

Oh, wait - I got to see the morning glories bloom on Monday when I was mowing.  I forgot I had planted those!  I am even shocked they did anything at all since I threw the seeds in the ground with the aiming skill of a blind drunk man with vertigo.  The seed package suggested that you soak the seeds in water for a day or two before planting (I read this, of course, after lobbing the seeds everywhere) so I figured the little boogers didn't stand a chance.  It was a joy to see the purple flowers whilst I mowed.  I also have several plants blooming that I have no idea what they are - they were bulbs I bought during the band's 'Flower Power' fundraiser and planted and left to their own devices.   Mother Nature rocks.

The neighbor down the road got a new puppy, and they have been very good about taking that puppy for walks up and down the road.  The puppy, being a puppy and all, and will tend to poop out and plop his butt down and not move from time to time during these walks.  I adore watching this process of the puppy walks.  The puppy will poop out and plop down and the owner will encourage the puppy and the puppy will respond with a wagging tail, and then immediately plop down again.  The owner will drag said puppy for a distance until the puppy is tired of the dragging process, then the puppy will walk a bit, and the process starts all over again...  (Hey, I live in the country - you take your excitement where you can get it!)

Five hours 'til test time...I'm off to busy myself so I don't think of it...

August 6, 2009 - Ug.  Fourth day of vacation.  Whoopie.  Sigh.  I am disgusted with news from work. One should never get news from work while on vacation...

On a happier note, the wee one passed his road test and we took him to Secretary of State to license him!  WOOT.  He did well from what I could tell.  I, of course - being the parent, had to sit in the back seat on the road test part and not make a sound.  So that is what I did like a good girl - I took my lucky book with me to read.  (The first 'Dune' book in the series.   I have stared at that for two prior children's road tests, and it seemed to work fine.)   I stared at the book and actually read this time.   I was so nervous all morning prior to the test, but once he passed the parking lot part and we were "on the road" for real, I was OK.  He, however, was nervous to the max.  After making him drive me around town to get gas and do errands before his road test, PLUS practice a few parallel parks in town, he made a bee line back to the house to use the bathroom before heading up for the test.  His poor stomach was so upset.  Hahahaha.  It is over, however, and that is a good thing.  Sigh.  I came home and had two margaritas and was in bed by 7:30 last night. 

August 6, 2009 Part Two - Last week I sent my husband to the store with a list.  One of the things on that list was "apples for lunches/snacks" and I just assumed (first mistake) that he knows that Red Delicious are the best for that sort of thing.   However, the boy came home with Macintosh apples.  Not my favorite out of hand eating apple.  That is when he suggested I make a pie.  That was also last week.   I said I would think about it. 

The more I thought about it, the more I thought
1)He forgot his reading glasses and I should be thankful he knew they were apples at all...
2)He intentionally picked pie apples instead because he wanted a pie...
3)The man hasn't paid one lick of attention to anything I've ever purchased or done in the last 30 years....

I'm pretty sure it's a tie between 2 and 3.  Today, however, I noticed several of the apples were going bad.  Far be it for me to let something go bad!  I had to use them up and I had to do it today.   So, I made some pie crust dough and peeled the remaining apples and made an apple pie.  The crust is ever so flaky.  Even though I didn't want to do it, it came out quite nice.  Normally when I begrudge doing something related to food, it comes out crappy. 

Then I researched various barbecue sauces on line.  I found a really good recipe for hot and spice honey bbq wings, and BOY that sounded DELICIOUS until I saw the calorie content and fat percent!  GOOD LORD!   I decided to do a slight variant to the honey hot bbq sauce and got some chicken breasts that were on sale.  At least I know those are lean.  Geez.  I must say, even though I am making it, I do look forward to eating it, too!

This morning I could smell the lovely scent of my four-o-clock flowers out back.  What a magnificent smell they have.   I wonder why no one has bottle and sold that?  Such a unique scent.  I watered my flowers while I was out sniffing around since the rain we need so badly does not come. 

The wee one worked in the corn fields today, and it looks as if he'll work tomorrow and all weekend!  Finally!  The corn is late doing it's cornish thing - and how that we've had warmer weather, BOOM - all the fields are getting ready.  He can use the money.  I called to get him on our car insurance, and it will cost 920 a year for him.  UG.  As you would guess, the wee one got a lecture on the way home from work about NOT getting into accidents or getting tickets, etc.  "It's not like I'm going to smash into something on purpose, Mom!!"  "NO, but you've been warned, so I expect you to be extra cautious!!"  I got the immediate MOM-IS-NUTS-SOMETIMES look, so I mentioned he could pay for insurance himself if he didn't want to hear what I had to say.  (We all know I am full of wisdom and good advice, after all...)

HOLY CRAP!  I went out to stir my sauce and took a good whiff of it!  SPICY!  Yikes.  I sneezed several times.  (Oh, sure - you are not supposed to snort it up your nose, but accidents happen!) I wonder if we will live through dinner!??  Will it come out as burny as it goes in!?  Stay tuned!

Tomorrow is my last day of vacation, officially.  Sigh.  I have done a lot of nothing.  I guess sometimes that is what vacations are for...

August 7, 2009 - And here it is, the last day of my vacation.  I am angry and upset and sad and bitter.  I hate being the 'old woman' who is bitter.  I can't stand feeling bitter.  Normally I am not so bitter.  I looked up bitter on dictionary.com and pretty much feel that way except for the lines about the taste sensations...

We are all entitled to feel upset from time to time.  (An actual psychologist told me that 11 years ago, so it must be true...) Being human, we do this 'anger' thing well.  We feel upset when we cannot control a situation.  So I'm not upset that I'm upset, but I am upset that it has to cause in me this evil bitter feeling.  (Really, that makes sense in my mind...when I originally thought it, but now I've just used the word 'bitter' way too much and it loses all meaning...)

This too, shall pass.  I can have a bitter angry day and it will all go away tomorrow.  I will be singing like Julie Andrews in 'The Sound of Music' by tomorrow, I'm sure.  Today, however, I will mumble to myself often and shake my fist at things and shuffle around the house being, well - bitter.  Maxine has NOTHING on me today. 

I will take out my emotions on my house.   The boys once again left me presents with piles of their cast off lives, so I can curse as I do laundry and clean up their messes.  I can vent to myself about life as I pick up the dog poop that the dogs are so generous to leave me in such quantities.   I can cry while I sweep up the eighty three pounds of dog hair that my dogs shed every day.  By the time I'm done with that, I will be able to view life in a different manner - "Gee, you are lucky to have such happy, shedding dogs" and "Isn't it nice you have a house to clean?" and possibly "I have a washer and dryer where many people don't, and I'm lucky to have such tools at my disposal..."

My apple pie turned out divine and I must admit the crust was my best crust ever!  The barbecue sauce I concocted was also VERY good.  Dinner was quite tasty last night.  I have to thank my Mom for that talent - making "wine from water" is a good talent to have.  Her skills, developed out of necessity during the Depression and not having much money in general all her life were fine tuned when I came along.  People used to rave about her delicious dinners and homemade items.  However, the homemade part was due to lack of funds to buy other things, so she could come up with some pretty cool stuff on a shoestring budget.   All those years she thought I wasn't watching and I was...or it's bred in to me and genetic and I really wasn't paying attention?  Either way, it's good to be able to cope with what one has at hand.  I wish my daughter would come home from time to time and I could teach her these skills.  I think I will just start emailing her with ideas.  Eventually she, too, will need to make water in to wine...

Muffy is on 'Sadie Watch' at the neighbors.  I see him sitting by their garage in the "I will pounce the second I see her" stance.  Poor Sadie.  Maybe Sadie will pounce on Muffy since Muffy is on her turf?  I hope so - even Muffy needs a lesson in humility from time to time.  

There, I just stripped the beds and started a load of wash.  I feel better already.  I may even get brave and steam clean the carpets today.  They are in dire need of that. 

We got the wee one on our insurance yesterday.  Today we were going to get his car legal (and you could tell he was all excited about that) but today is a furlough day for the Michigan Secretary of State offices.  The boy will have to wait until Monday.  I told him he could use my car to go to his friend's house tonight.  (Secret sigh of worry inserted here...)  

OK, I'm off to conquer my bitterness with cleanliness.  Wish me luck...

August 9, 2009 - Ah, the bitterness that was burning my very soul on Friday morning quickly left me as I sweated my butt off cleaning on Friday.  (My Aunt wrote and said it sounded like I needed Estrogen or something - and I have to agree.  These severe moods of anger and bitterness are, no doubt, related to hormones and the fact I'm not getting any younger and things will start to happen to me that I can only sit helplessly and back and watch...)

Cleaning this hog pen quickly sucked the bitterness out of me.  I probably just sweated the anger out.  I pulled out our bunk bed framework and swept behind it.  Oh my.  I found multitudes of colorful hair scrunchies that I had lost in the tossing and turning of sleep, enough pet hair to create a whole new house pet, and several half chewed rawhide bones.  As I was talking to myself and being amazed at the crap behind the beds, I looked up and saw the dogs staring at me with the same look the kids used to have on their little faces on Christmas morning.  They knew there were rawhides half eaten back there, and waited with sheer doggie excitement for me to lob them over to them from behind the bed.   They were THRILLED.

After I cleaned behind the bed, I remade the beds since I had washed sheets and comforters, and swept the bedroom and then steam cleaned the carpet.  Once I did that and the carpet looked so much better in the bedroom, my carpet cleaning frenzy eeked out into the living room.  Once that was done, I moved out to the back/laundry room and did that carpet. 

In between all of this I was making ice in my ice maker, making up a batch of new hummingbird sugar water, cleaning the hummingbird feeder, and cleaning the bathroom.  I was working like a wild women driven by the need to conquer. 

Friday mid-morning, my daughter called and said "what a marvelous day" it was, but the tone of her voice told me (as a part time detective and Mother) that she was near tears and she was being quite facetious.   I asked her what was wrong.  She told me she wanted me to tell her Dad that her car wouldn't start.  I asked her some basic questions - "Does it even want to turn over?" "No." "Do you have headlights?" "Didn't check, but there was the dome light..." She got a ride to work Friday from her boyfriend, but something in my gut told me it wasn't her car.  I mean, it felt like it was something simple that was wrong.  I have to state here that a Mom's intuition is a powerful thing and when that feeling hits you, you have to act on it.  I had to sign her lease anyway...so after picking up my son from work I drove up to Kalamazoo.  

I signed the lease at the apartment office, then drove over to her apartment building and found her car.  I got out my set of her car keys and unlocked her car and sat down.  I tried to start it.  It didn't do a thing.  (I instantly had a flash back to my first car - years and years ago, my Rambler.  I had gone to a party at my friend Jenny's house, and when it was time to leave, I couldn't start my car.  I tried and tried.  I had Jenny's Dad check my engine.  It wasn't until 20 minutes later that I looked and saw my car was in "Drive" and THAT was the issue.)  So I tried to move my daughter's gear shifter.  It wouldn't move.  "Ah Ha!" I muttered, "It didn't catch in park!"  I played with the key/brake/shifter combo until it finally snapped into park and I was able to start it!  Ta Dah.  I walked up to her apartment and got her boyfriend and made him come down to see what I had done.  He said he had suspected that.  I asked him to text her and let her know that the lease was signed and I fixed her car.  On the ride home, I had classical music cranked on the radio and it was just a peaceful ride home...  I can't explain it.  The feeling of contentment just washed over me.  Not a cocky feeling, mind you.   Just a peaceful feeling of 'knowing' and being connected to your children or at least their vehicles...  I felt so - so - I can't even put a word to it.  I said a prayer and thanked God for a Mother's intuition and this little diversion to help me get my head out of my butt emotionally.

Friday evening, I had decided I was going to let my youngest use my car for his first solo trip to his friend's house.  (He had a play date to shoot his best friend with paintballs on Friday night and BE SHOT by his best friend with paintballs...)  I took pictures of him getting ready to leave and stood outside for quite a while after he left the driveway. 

I had asked him to call when he got there and call when he was ready to leave.  He did just fine.  He came home with welts the size of New Jersey all over his body from paintball inflicted wounds and was sore but happy.

On Saturday, I took him to work , came back to sipped my coffee as I watched the hummingbirds fight over the feeder in the rain.   (Oh, yeah - we FINALLY got rain.  Lots of Rain.  You could hear the ground sucking up the rain like a starving kid with a straw and a milkshake...) 

The hummingbird antics entertained me for approximately one hour before I realized my legs were numb from standing in one spot.   I got my camera and took a few shots.  I played with my camera settings as well, trying to get the best shot, but it's hard when it's down pouring rain all over the place and when the birds themselves found it hard to stay in one place for any length of time.  The young male fought with the old male, even though there are eight places to rest and eat at the feeder.  I have decided that hummingbirds are a good reflection of human nature in general...

The rain kept up all day but then the clouds left us by dusk and the humidity kicked in.  Everything in my house swelled from the humidity.  The door to the bathroom would barely shut.  The tile floor was beginning to sweat.  We decided to turn on the air conditioner. 

Today they predict our temps could rise to the mid 90s with heat index near 100.  I think I will spend today in the air conditioning, lounging about on the last day off of vacation and going back to work...

August 17, 2009 - Last week went by faster than the speed of light.  Lots to do to catch up at work, and I'm not even caught up at work.  I can't believe how fast that week went!  I am amazed, sometimes, how fast we perceive time moving and other times it doesn't move at all.  That has always baffled me as a human...but I digress...

I moved out of my office on Monday in to my 'new' office then had my furlough day on Tuesday, then Wednesday - Friday just blew by me like I was going down hill on a roller coaster at high speeds with my facial skin stretched back and my eye balls bulging.

This weekend, however, was nice and relaxed.  My wee one went to the fair with friends on Saturday and was gone for most of the day.  My husband took me grocery shopping that day.  My daughter came over on Saturday night to do laundry.  (She showed up at nine p.m. - she thinks we are still young'uns and stay up late - silly girl - but I will take that as a compliment from her.  If she thinks her parents are still young and alive, by golly, we MUST be!)  We had a good time yakkin' whilst she did her laundry.  She paid attention to the pets, which they were in dire need of...she is Dr. Doolittle when it comes to animals.   We went out and watched Jake and his toad for a while.  Jake is fascinated by the toad in our poop pen.  The toad waits under the window for bugs, since we keep a night light of sorts on there all night, so the toad probably thinks, "Hey, free food" and just sits there.  Jake on the other hand looks at that toad with the look of a caveman seeing a bison for the first time.  He can't get over that toad.   He doesn't attack the toad, but he is in a quandary over why the thing is in his area.  He will stare at it for hours if I let him.  After the mad excitement of watching Jake watch a toad, we came back in and I listened to the my daughter and youngest attack each other verbally as brother and sisters are required to do by law.  It was entertaining.

Sunday my wee one spent the day with his brother and sister, so another day alone to do what I wanted.  I wanted to mop and clean.  So I did.  I took a nap.  I drank a beer while making dinner.   I read a lot.  Very very relaxing day. 

Now back at it again today.   "Once again into the fray..."

August 26, 2009 - Ah, unpaid days off.  They gives you time to catch up on things.   (That way you don't feel like you've lost your whole weekend catching up on things when you can do some of the catching up during the week...and it just dawned on me that humans spend a lot of their time catching up so in essence we were born behind schedule in the first place...) 

There is a steady rain falling.  So much for my plans to do yard work.  (They were only plans.  I doubt highly I would have really gotten out and done any yard work today.  But it's the thought that counts.)

I have noticed an unusually high amount of dead skunks on the roads.  Almost like mile markers on a highway, there have been so many and are so regular around here.  I feel bad for the skunks.  No doubt they just wanted to run across the road to get a gallon of milk for the kids, and BAM. 

I researched this morning to find out if humans could eat skunks.  (Seeing as I have internet access, there is no excuse for me NOT to find out something I am curious about.  This is the age where there are no secrets if you know how to use a search bar...)  Apparently some people have consumed skunks, and from what I can tell they were eaten quite a bit during the Depression era.   Their fur was sold/marketed as "American Sable" for years until the whole truth in advertising issue came up.  I wanted to know if you could eat skunk because of all the poor dead ones on the road and such -  but hey, free meal sort of thing.   I know how cabbage, broccoli, and brussel sprouts smell when you cook them...might be the same deal with skunks - smell awful, tastes great.

I have always admired skunks, now that I think on it.  (Also, if you say the word skunk over and over again, it loses all meaning...)  I admire them for being able to tolerate their own defense mechanism/smell reflex stench and for not letting that get them down over the years of their evolution.  Go skunks.  And kudos to God for coming up with such an awesome way to protect them.  I would love to have a fly on the wall for that planning session...

"Ok, we've come up with the color and size for the skunk but how will it survive against predators?" 
"Give it big teeth!" 
"No, that wouldn't look right on something so small - remember form/fit/function...."
"Give it opposable thumbs so it can swing an ax!" 
"No, already enough of 'em out there with opposable thumbs, don't want to get in a design rut..." 
"Ooooooo, I know - make them smell so bad that NO ONE and NOTHING would go near it intentionally!!" 
"Oh, man, David - you are going to get a promotion on this one..."

I still have a lot of 'thank you' notes to write to classmates that came to the 30th class reunion.  I wanted to tell each one that came how cool it was that they came, plus update the class record as I do it.   I'm only 1/3 of the way through the stack.  Sigh.  Lazy.  I'm ever so lazy and uninspired as of late.

Oh, speaking of looking stuff up on the internet...when I was young and would see lightening in the sky at night when it was perfectly clear out, my Mom would tell me it was 'heat lightening.'  Well, yes - it was lightening, but not a special form of lightening caused by heat of any sort.  It turned out heat lightening was just lightening you saw from a distant storm.  (That I learned from a book years ago...)  Well, last night I saw tons of heat lightening, so I went inside and looked at a weather map, and sure enough, about 30 miles to my North there were tons of storms.  (That I got on the internet.) 

Well, now that I posted, I'm off to take a nap to ponder how far behind I am on stuff and being in bed will only put me farther behind, but hey - free dreams.

September 1, 2009 - Ah, September already!  Geez.  I fear I can no longer keep up with the passage of time so I am just ignoring it and in my own mind I've come to a slower, more manageable speed which suits me just fine.

I had an epiphany this morning... You know you are getting old when the idea of Splenda with fiber holds more of an allure than sex ever did... 

School starts for my daughter and the wee one on September 8th.  My daughter's senior year of college already!  Oh my.   I am very proud of her.  She's managed to keep straight A's and work and support herself this whole time.  I am very proud of her, even if she feels all alone sometimes.  My wee one has not even begun to change his "stay up all night" schedule in preparation for school.  The first day will kill him... 

All is well in Sandyland.  It is currently 45 degrees here in the Mitten and you can see your breath outside.  I noticed Orion is starting to show more and more in the Southern sky in the morning hours.   Fall is upon us.  Or at least it feels that way NOW until we have that surge in heat that comes around my oldest son's birthday in late September.  (I remember his 10th birthday party where we were all sweating profusely because it was so hot!)   September is Birthday month in this house.  My daughter, husband, and oldest son are all September babies.  I tried to pass off the birth of my daughter (who was born one day before her father's birthday) as his "gift" that year, but he didn't buy it. 

Stewie the cat ran out last night and ended up spending the night in the dog pen.  I notice this morning there is a pile of dead crickets near the door.  The little booger was a huntin' last night and left me presents!  I had to laugh.  The dogs went out there and looked at the pile and gave it a sniff and looked at me as if to say, "What the heck?"  Then they went off to find the places Stewie had pooped and proceeded to have a snack. 

September 7, 2009 - It was a nice relaxing weekend.  Saturday the kids brought over food to grill and we grilled.  Yum.  Then we had a bonfire Saturday night, and it was a lovely night for a bonfire - the moon was nearly full, the stars were out, and there was barely a breeze.  (We have another bonfire planned for next weekend or the weekend after for my husband's and my daughter's birthdays.  The two older kids had originally purchased concert tickets to Aerosmith and ZZ Top for their Dad for his birthday gift, but as we all know, Steve Tyler danced his way off of a stage during a concert back in July and broke his shoulder, so the rest of the tour was cancelled.   Dad announced that instead of going to the concert, he'd wanted to have a bonfire with his kids and a bottle of Cabo Wabo Tequila, which will be interesting since he doesn't drink much anymore, so I'm sure that bonfire will give me lots to blog about...but I digress...) 

Even the dogs came out for the bonfire.   We had chains out by the bonfire for them to get hooked to so they could mingle and hang out with all of us.  I had taken them out to the bonfire area myself on leashes.   I had hooked them up to their leashes while they were in their dog pen, and walked them (OK, they dragged me) back to the fire pit.  I obviously forgot to latch the gate in the dog pen while being hauled off at a high rate of speed behind two spastic dogs.  This is a fact that will be useful to know later in the story...

After the bonfire was over and the kids had headed home, I sat in my chair thinking how fun my kids are to hang around with and how nice the night was and all, then decided I had better head to bed.  Prior to going to bed, however, I decided to let the dogs have one last visit to the potty pen.   I opened the back door and stepped out and the dogs ran into the pen along with two of the cats.  I stretched and admired the night sky.  I noticed that the two cats that had escorted us out were now in the neighbor's yard.  "How did they..." I started to say out loud, when I turned and realized that the gate was wide open.  "Oh NO!"  I spurted.  (OK, I said other things too, but this is a family channel, right?)  I went in to get my husband, and mentioned that someone (me) had left the gate open (wide) and the dogs were gone (way gone.)  He also said "Oh No!" or something to that effect, loudly.  We went out into the night to try to find the idiot dogs, who were loping about the general area with glee.   I could see their shapes (thanks to the bright moon) and hear the tinkle of the tags on their collars.  I finally saw two shadows across at the neighbors around their front tree.  "Ah Ha!" I exclaimed, and carefully made my way over in that direction.  (The neighbors have been dumping their cat litter near a tree by the road, for some odd reason, but that reason now seemed to be clear - it was a midnight banquet for my two stupid dogs.) 

With stealth and grace, I slid up to them near the pile of cat litter and grabbed Jake by the collar.  Kia, being the evil female and instigator of all crimes committed by the dogs, skated off from my reach.   Jake looked up at me as if to say, "Am I in trouble?" 

I dragged him back into our front yard and Kia followed, running in to snip at Jake and taunt me from time to time.  I herded her somewhat back to the house.  My husband had his car door open, I saw.  Kia was a sucker for going for a ride, and she always fell for the open car door trick.   This night was no exception.  She flew into his car and plopped down in the drivers seat ready to ride.  Soon both were back in the house. 

So that was the end of Saturday.   Sunday was just odd in general due to a slight snafu...

My sister in law had emailed me a while back to schedule a get together with my husband's siblings.  His one sister is up from down South, so we wanted to have a little get together while they were here.   When I got the e-mail I put the date (she had stated October 6th) on my calendar right away, and forwarded her letter to my two older kids so they could reserve the day.   It didn't dawn on me that it was a Tuesday - and her letter said, 'Sunday, Oct. 6' and it didn't dawn on me that they wouldn't be up for over a month!  Ug.  Never read your home email at work when you can't think.

So yesterday, I got home from the store and heard my husband's cell phone singing to the world.  There was a voicemail on the phone.  It was my brother in law stating that "dessert was about to begin" and "where are you guys?"  It all clicked in my head, then.  SHE MEANT SEPTEMBER 6TH!  Ug, I felt so stupid.  I called them right back and explained, and I'm sure this will be good for a chuckle as time goes by, but I seriously felt so STUPID.  Duh!  Oh well, it was over, and today we go to see the sister at my MIL apartment.

Last night I had nightmares about missing family events, except it was my family in the dreams.  All of my family!  Long dead grandparents and parents were present in the dream.  I woke up at 2:30 a.m. just worn out from all the frenzy in my head.  Sigh.

Today should be better - we will see my husband's sister and brother in law - we will do little things around the house, and the pattern of Fall will be upon us.  School starts tomorrow.  Viva Life.  Now go forth and conquer your little corner of the world!

September 8, 2009 - Viva the new week.  The wee one's day started out with a loud "Dang It!" from the laundry room.  I inquired, as Mom's are inquisitive and all -   "Why the disgust?"  "You didn't do laundry!" he said.   "Well, duh - what made you think I would, you got home at nine p.m. last night!"  "I just assumed you would..." he mumbled, and headed in to the shower.  Ah, young males.  I feel no pity for the boy.  He didn't mention he needed any laundry done, plus the boy is 16 and perfectly able to push and pull knobs on a washer.  I just smiled to myself as he grumbled.  (I will include a picture of the wee one from his first home game/march of the season from last Thursday for your viewing pleasure...)

So school begins for my daughter and youngest son today .  I wish the well.  I hope they both have fun this year and also STUDY and LEARN and GROW as humans.

Now, I'm off to do laundry, for some odd reason, I have a feeling I need to...

September 11, 2009 - It is hard to remember all the devastation that took place eight years ago without feeling totally out of control and useless as an individual.  Many things are beyond our control as humans.  Many things we will never understand.  Being human is a fleeting thing... seize your days as they come your way.

I was looking at myself in the kitchen window as I did dishes this morning.  (I have stopped wearing make up most of the time.  As much as I spackled in the bags under my eyes and plastered over the beard on my chin, I was not improving much at all, so I gave up.)  I do not hate the way I look, I just wish I looked prettier sometimes, but then that would not be "me."   So what if the bags under my eyes could house a small refugee nation?  This is me - it's all you're gonna to get.  WYSIWYG

September 14, 2009 - THIS DAY IN HISTORY - 1987 - I gave birth to my daughter.  She kept me up all night the previous night with mild labor pains. By 5 a.m. I couldn't stand it any longer and we headed for the hospital.  I gave birth to her (on my side, as I couldn't push on my back any more) at 10:10 a.m.   My life has been much better ever since.  Smile.

The things you learn from your kids is amazing.  It's not an intentional 'learning' as it were - it's accidental.  You learn as they learn.  I had claimed in High School I never wanted kids, but now that I've had a few - I wouldn't trade that experience for the world and the universe.   I've learned SO MUCH ABOUT SO MUCH.  Contented sigh. 

Oh, sure - I've cried a lot, too.  My daughter HATED ME!  The first several years of our lives together was no picnic. She cried loud and often.  My friends would call the house and say things like, "Oh, my!  I hear the Bitch in the background!"  (The pet term for my daughter who could scream so loud that blood would eek out of everyone's ears in the greater tri-state area.) 

My daughter was much more bonded to her father than me, and more than a few times he would come home from work at 11:30 p.m. to find me in a heap on the floor crying right along with my daughter.  As soon as DADDY picked her up, though,  she was all smiles and sunshine.  We still laugh about it to this day (although at the time I thought I would not survive those nights...)

Over the years the relationship changed.   She is a ray of sunshine in my life.  If we started out on shaky ground, that has long been forgotten. 

I adore her energy.  I am amazed at her wonder of life.  I am impressed by her depth and insight.  I am constantly amazed that she fell out of me...

A busy week ahead - board meetings and football games and car washes and bonfires.  It will be fun.  I wish my friend Vickie could be up here this week.  I miss her, and wish she was closer.  I think of her constantly.  VICKIE, MOVE BACK TO MICHIGAN!!  :(

Last night I couldn't get to sleep due to a whistling in my nose.  We all get that - a booger caught cross wise or something that causes a 'WeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeWeeeeeeeeeee' sound that you swear the whole neighborhood can hear. No matter how you pick, blow, or snuff - the whistling goes on and on.  Ug.  Boogers - go figure.

I have been on a strict grocery budget since the plant cut our hours and the cats have finally went on strike. They managed to go from a brand name "Indoor Formula" to a lesser brand name "indoor formula" without flinching, and they even ate the store brand "indoor formula" cat food without complaining too much - but this time I got plain old whatever was on sale no name cat food.

After a night of prowling and being, well - cats - all three came in this morning and jumped up to eat some dry food but they all stopped after sniffing it and turned and looked at me.  (The expression on their face was, "Lady, you call this FOOD?") All three just stood there, looking at the store brand food and looking at me.  All three began a protest, verbally.   They followed me around all morning.  They have been making tiny little signs and have been picketing.  I tried to explain to them during intense cat negotiations that I can't afford their fancy food.  They were not impressed.  I can't wait until they have to use the litter box today - ug.  That, too, is generic litter and all heck is gonna break loose - I can see it now...

September 24, 2009 - As I was in the bathroom the other day, I was watching a fruit fly just hovering around the window.  (I assume it was a fruit fly.  It was a very small insect, so all small insects that I can't see without a high powered telescope fall in to the class of 'fruit fly.')  I opened up the screen and sort of waved in the little guy's general direction like a worker in on an airport runway trying to inspire it to fly out and be free, but it just hovered there.  There is no fruit nor fruit smelling type things in my bathroom, trust me, so why he was there in the first place I have no clue.  If I only had 24 hours to live I wouldn't be spending it in MY bathroom, that's for sure.

Muffy the elder cat is getting QUITE MEAN.   Ug.  He picks fights with both of the other cats constantly.  Taffy and Stewie both look at me as if to say, "When are you going to put this old codger in a home?!?!"  Muffy can be relaxing in my lap and enjoying a good old ear scratching when one of the other cats will casually walk by and Muffy will flip backward out of my lap like a ninja and move at the speed of light to pounce, turning the living room into a cat smack down wresting match.  For a cat that normally acts as if he can barely move without assistance and who creaks and makes odd noises when he does move, Muffy can warp time to attack his house mates at an amazing rate of speed.  I know he's "mean" because he's OLD and he's, well, earned the right to beat the crap out of innocent bystanders when the mood hits him, but GEEZ...

My oldest son turns 29 this weekend!!!  Where did the time go?   He's a great older brother to his siblings - always has been.  When his sister was born, he was the official interpreter for her.  (She had quite a speech impediment when she was young and he seemed to be the only one who could understand her.   I think he admitted later on in life that he wasn't always sure what she was saying, either, and made stuff up but I digress...)  When his little brother was born, even though he was 12, he would play with this little brother and treat him like an equal.  He was a huge help around the house.  I have always felt badly about his youth, as my husband and I were so young ourselves that we had no clue how to raise a kid and my oldest suffered for that.  I have apologized to him over and over again for some of the parental mistakes we made 'back then' and he says, "Hey, we all survived" or "I turned out fine, Mom!"  When it comes to kids I've been blessed with three awesome ones!  Happy Birthday, Dude!

Work has us back to 40 hours a week every other week.  That will be a huge blessing.  This whole ordeal has taught me a huge lesson that I needed to learn.  I was so mad at first, but in reality - isn't anger just the 'brave face' that fear puts on?  I will try with all my brains NOT to get in to a situation like this one ever again, assuming we survive this situation first...

I have paid off my car!  Hurray.   As Forest Gump would say, "One less thing."  This month was the last payment for my 'beast' and I now officially own her.  My first car I paid for ALL by myself.  I am happy, yet try to bridle it since of course NOW is when everything will break and fall off and explode during highway speeds, etc.  I don't want to get too cocky. 

My husband got a speeding ticket this week.  He was going 70 in a 55 m.p.h. zone.  I didn't yell at him for he was feeling bad enough about it on his own.  That was his 'free' money to help with groceries and such but if he wants to give it to the State, that is his choice. 

My sister gave me lots of tomatoes and I made salsa last night.  Yum.  I also made egg salad for lunches, so needless to say there was a whole lot of chopping going on at my house last night, as you can tell from the four Band-Aids on my various fingers.  (One should never attempt to hurry a process when using sharp knives...good advice for surgeons, as well.) 

September 30, 2009 - The month of September is over ALREADY?  Oy. 

Ah, to be a doggie.  They can squat and pee where ever their heart desires.  They don't care if you are watching, they just pee.  (Although I am reaching the age where I, too, will probably pee where ever my bladder desires soon enough...but I will care if someone is watching.)

The leaves are changing at a remarkable rate.  So pretty.  Death can be beautiful in it's own way... 

I really have nothing to say.   Amazing, I know.  Sandy is speechless.  Mark that on your calendar.   Happy End of September!

October 5, 2009 - I woke up at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning.  (My husband had to work, so the dogs were ever so grateful to finally see movement from my general direction.)   The dogs headed for the back door immediately - they were three hours past their normal morning potty time.  I staggered to the back door and walked out with them in my "just awake" dazed state.  As they went about their business, I noticed approximately 15 squirrels of various sizes and colors all over the yard.  There are many walnut trees in our area, and they were all very busy doing squirrel type things with said walnuts and running around in a spastic squirrel type way being all - well, squirrelly.  I slurred to the dogs, "Man, those squirrels are going nuts!"   Then I laughed at what I had just said.  At the time, it was quite funny to me...but then again, I had yet to have my coffee.

I got a lot done this weekend.  I mopped the kitchen floor and bathroom floor.  I washed and changed the bedding.  I swept and dusted.  I washed rugs.  I went to see my Aunt and Uncle on Saturday and had a nice visit.  I made a nice roast for dinner on Sunday.  It was a good weekend.  No stress.  No fuss.  Just living...and I've always been a big fan of living.

I turn 49 this Friday!  Holy Crap!   As I ponder the last 49 years, I must admit it's been a wonderful life so far.   I can't quite get my brain around the concept of time any more so I gave up even trying to understand it a long time ago.  I still feel 20 or so - not "49" and I still feel ALIVE and not three quarters of the way to dead.  So time is meaningless, really.  It's how you use the time you have, I guess. 

I was watching a police show and saw them ask the person they pulled over on a suspected DUI to recite the alphabet for them from G to P, and I thought to myself that I would fail that if it were me, booze or no booze.   I know this as fact because last week I got a bug up my butt to sort out all our music CDs in alphabetical order, and I had to keep singing the alphabet song to myself to get them sorted correctly.  The alphabet is something that just 'is' and my brain knows it's the alphabet and it knows it uses the alphabet to forms words eventually but my brain does not deem it necessary to be able to instantly KNOW what follows what in the big picture of letters.  It has the 'song' to fall back on, after all, so why store unnecessary information when that one brain cell could be used to store something else more worthwhile?  I disagree with my brain on this one.  I think I should be able to know (without singing a stupid song from kindergarten) that M follow L and U is before V and all that.  My brain and I often disagree on things, but I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one...it should just KNOW.

October 8, 2009 - The high winds woke me up at 3:30 a.m. yesterday morning.  I decided to just stay awake and start the day. Two large,dead branches I have been waiting to fall off two trees finally did fall off, however, so it was all good.  (Except for all the people who lost power due to high winds...)  At one point the wind sounds kept getting louder and louder and louder. The dogs and I looked at each other in a worried sort of way.  (Secretly, in my head I was pondering which dog to grab to use an an anchor just in case the house blew down and they were no doubt pondering if I was edible in the event the wind killed off all living things with opposable thumbs and no one was around to open the dog food cans...)  Auntie Em!!

My BFF Vickie called me the other night to tell me how hot and humid it was in Florida.  They had tried to eat dinner on the porch, but it was just too darned hot to do so.  She knows me well enough to know I would hate it down there (due to the heat and humidity) and I agree.  While she was telling me how hot it was, I was telling her how cold it was.  (Example:  My son came home from marching band practice Monday night to announce that he was steaming on the field.  Apparently he was so hot from marching and the air was so cold that he was producing a fog cloud out of the top of his head...)  I miss my Vickie.  I wish I could win the lottery and force her to move back to the Mitten. 

This morning the moon is high and bright.   I love the 'harvest moon' time of year.  I also love the darker, gloomier weather off fall and winter.  I am SO opposite every other human on this earth.   I thrive in the fall/winter in my mind.  Sometimes, I'm just not right.

The LCROSS moon satellites are due to impact the moon tomorrow morning.  Perhaps I should call in sick and watch it LIVE on TV?  (Of course after posting this, my feeble excuse of "being ill"s would not hold up in court.)  We'll find out if the moon has water or not.  I am sure that will be good to know, in case one gets lost and has to pull over for a drink...

October 11, 2009 - After waiting for the impact of LCROSS into the moon Friday morning, I was rather disappointed.  No explosions or bright lights.  Great shots of the moon, however, but nothing for us pitiful humans who crave fiery explosions...

My birthday was wonderful.  It started at 5 a.m.  I stumbled out of bed and into the living room.  I was NOT awake yet when my husband practically shouted, "Happy Birthday!  We're taking you to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra tonight!  Surprise!"  He sounded almost like a five year old who had found a toad. 

I mumbled something and made my way to the bathroom.  When I came out I cocked my head and asked him, "What did you say?" and he repeated himself.  I mumbled more, nothing really registering yet, and went outside with the dogs.  Outside it hit me.  I came back in and asked, "WHAT did you say?!"  By then the thrill for him had worn off so he just told me in a grunt, and I was happy.  It took a while to sink in.   They had gotten tickets a month ago and had kept it a secret.  My family is not good at keeping secrets, so this was a big deal. 

Work was a hoot.  Vickie got me a beautiful birthday cake and I ate two huge pieces.  I got cards and wishes from many people.  I got slacks and a skirt from Leslie.  I got phone calls and emails.   People treated me quite well.  My sister took me out for lunch.  I forced people to listen to Glenn Miller all day. 

The concert was marvelous.  My daughter, her boyfriend, my husband, and my youngest all went.  (My oldest son had to work.)  Excellent show.  I love Big Band music.  After I got a bit rowdy during "In the Mood" an older lady sitting behind me came up and smacked me and said, "Why do you know this music?   You are too young!"  So I proceeded to tell her about listening to my Dad's 78 records when my parents were at work and how I love any band music, and I babbled for a while and finally said, "My Mom would have been 87 right about now..." and I started crying.  She put her forehead to mine and said, "I'm 87!" and then hugged me.  It was just a wonderful evening.  I also told anyone who would listen to me before the concert that all three of my kids play trombone.  For some reason that seemed important for me to announce to the world.  Smile.

Saturday was great, too.  My daughter got me the complete first and second season of Saturday Night Live.  She also paid for a hair cut and color for me, which I needed so badly.  She spent the rest of the day with us and my oldest son came over after work, bought us dinner and he got me a huge cake.  Yum.  (My youngest son had an all day marching band festival.)  We watched three episodes of SNL from 1975.  I got to see my kids react to John Belushi as Joe Cocker the same way I reacted to it 34 years ago.  (I laughed so hard I wet myself THEN and NOW. Sigh.)

Today I have been suffering from a cake overdose induced hangover of sorts.  It has been a good weekend.  Getting older isn't so bad, really.  (Not when there is cake.)

October 15, 2009 - OK, it's actually SNOWING large flakes outside RIGHT NOW.  This makes me estatic, but I am the ONLY HUMAN IN HISTORY that thrives on snow flakes and dark, gloomy weather, I'm pretty sure.  I was quite excited when I saw the flakes...

My Stewie the Cat has shuffled off of this mortal coil - must give us 'paws' - sigh.  He was hit by a car.  I always knew Taffy the Cat would lure him into the road one day and tell him to sit there with his eyes closed.  I found him in the yard Tuesday morning.  Someone had laid him up by the front tree, which was nice of them. 

When I saw him there as I was driving out, I just KNEW.  I couldn't move for 10 minutes.  I decided I had to get my morning work done and drove to work, but as soon as the mad morning rush was over, I came home and got our favorite Spongebob blanket and went out and wrapped him up.  I didn't want the neighborhood dogs dragging him off.  We buried him that night, my husband and my youngest son.  We cried and laughed.   Stewart gave us TONS to laugh about...Bye, little Dude.  Sigh...  Now who's going to drool on me and sleep on my chest?  :(

October 16, 2009 - My husband made bacon for breakfast at 4:30.  The smell of bacon can wake me out of a dead sleep better than a nuclear alarm clock could - so I was AWAKE.   I stood outside with the doggies for a while and it was so peaceful.   No noise except for the chicken at the farm out back who was warming up for the day (and not doing very well at it, I might add) but since I live in a glass chicken coop myself I won't throw rocks...

It dawned on me as I was standing there enjoying the quiet that my favorite spot to view stars is the Southern Sky.  Now my brain knows perfectly well which direction is NORTH and SOUTH and such but there is a tiny little corner of my brain that associates the "main" direction of all directions to the South due to my star gazing.  So sometimes when I think of friends and where they live I will picture the direction of their whereabouts in my mind for entertainment purposes, such as this morning - I was thinking of my friend Kathy who lives in New York - and I "see" in my mind's eye that she is THAT WAY (which in the case this morning is West.)  Once I realized that I was thinking Kathy lived West, I laughed.   "Duh, idiot!  She lives THAT WAY, not THAT WAY!" I said to myself.  The dogs are so used to me babbling to myself they didn't even bother to turn to see what I was laughing about.  I guess what this all boils down to is the fact that when the polarity of our magnetic field "flips" so North is South and South in North, I should have very few issues acclimating myself to the change...

It snowed yesterday morning for a few hours.  Nothing stuck to the ground, of course, but IT SNOWED.  I was GIDDY all morning.  Why does dark, snowy weather make me so happy?  It cannot just be due to the fact that winter in my mind is associated with warm, fuzzy things like Christmas, stews, soups, and flannel nightgowns.  I think I'm just unique (for lack of a better word...) 

P.S. It was announced formally yesterday (while fellow coworker's teeth chattered and fuses were being blown all over the plant from space heater overload) that I am not 'unique' - I'm just plain crazy...

October 25, 2009 - I think I just killed the coffee maker this morning.  How, I have no clue.  My husband has been the maker of the coffee for ever now that he's on first shift.  I merely got the pot ready to go this morning, and it made coffee just fine, but now it's not 'on' and there are no helpful digital lights to tell me what is wrong with her.  Ug, modern technology.  I dread the fact there may not be coffee tomorrow morning.  You wouldn't like me without morning coffee...  Apparently the pot was pissed that I touched it.  Maybe coffee pots bond with their pusher of buttons and I made it mad?

My husband is watching a movie with headphones on (he uses headphones on the weekends since he gets up earlier than most humans and doesn't want to wake up the whole world) and I asked him this morning when I got up if he could just leave them on for a while.  I hate the sound of the TV first thing in the morning and the droning of a movie or show that I don't want to watch.   He agreed to leave them on for a while.  Thank goodness.  My whole family could sit and watch movies twenty four hours a day.  I, on the other hand, have to be in the mood for a movie.  I can't just watch a movie for no reason.  (I can't tell you  how very upset I was when Direct TV announced that since we were such lovely customers that they would provide Showtime and the movie channels free for six months.  UG!)  Times like this I really wish the house was bigger so I could run and hide.

My youngest son had marching band competitions last Saturday, a double header.  We went up to see them march at their first competition.  My oldest son didn't have to work, so he came along.  It was a hoot.  They did very well.  They got first place in their class.  We came home after that one and the band went on to their second competition.  (The night before was the last home football game, and the director let them all come home after halftime as many were not feeling well...little did we know it was just the beginning of the great flu sweep of '09!) 

The wee one was officially sick on Sunday with a fever and coughing.  ("When did you start feeling ill?"   "Thursday, maybe?"  "Why didn't you tell me?"   "I wasn't sick sick yet, just sick.")  I did not think, being a trained and certified Mom who has a PhD in the proper use of a thermometer, that it was the flu.  He was not shivering or shaking or puking.  He just had a fever.   I kept him home from school on Monday since he still had said fever.  He was not happy with me.  The kid likes school.  He may not be an A plus student, but he likes to go to school. 

Later in the day on Monday the announcements started coming in that school would be closed Tuesday and Wednesday due to illness.   So many kids were sick at all the facilities, it was just the best choice to make.   Other schools around these parts were closing down as well.  The wee one called me at work and was a bit worried - "Mom, Matt has the flu and I drank Matt's orange juice last week and...my head feels like it's going to explode and stuff..."  

I got my son in to see the doctor Tuesday morning mainly for his peace of mind.  I thought he had just an upper respiratory infection, and that is what it was.  One knows when one has the flu.  You feel two tiny steps to the left away from death, after all.  I think my son was relieved to hear a doctor say he just had "the other thing" that was going around, not the flu flu or swine flu.  He had the lesser of the three evils.

So school was down for the flu flu, the H1N1 flu, and the bronchitis type wave of illness that was blowing through the community at a high rate of speed.  Many were gone from work since their kids were sick and they had to stay home and tend to them.  Our school district decided to keep school closed for the rest of the week, since the kids that weren't sick on Monday-Wednesday were getting sick by Thursday.  I praise their choice.  Sure, the kids will have to go an extra week this summer, but oh well. 

My wee one was upset that I wouldn't let him hang around with his recovering friends this week.  I explained that the whole reason they had school closed was NOT to inspire kids to hang out at the mall or herd together in small 'share the germs' play groups - it was to get them away from the sick ones or get them better if they were sick.  "So I have to be ALONE until NEXT WEEK?!" he lamented.  "Yes, Yes you do!" I said in my best 'wise Mom' voice.   "I am not pleased..." was his response. 

My husband has come down with what ever the wee one had, but he is taking it like a man.  I am patiently waiting my turn.  I know for a fact we like to share as a family.  The two oldest kids seem to be doing OK at this point.  Wash your hands, folks....wash your hands...

October 26, 2009 - Seriously, think about it - October is almost OVER already!!  The concept of time sometimes eludes me.

There are several trees around our neighbor hood that completely lost all of their leaves this weekend.  I am amazed by that - you can be admiring the beauty of the oranges and reds then PLOP, all gone like magic.   My husband hooked up the leaf sucker upper thingy to the mower this weekend, but he was not feeling up to sucking any leaves on the one day (yesterday) that it was dry enough to do so.

The kids go back to school today.  I have successfully aroused my son from slumber.  He is now camping in the bathroom.   (He sleeps in the shower sometimes.  He'll be in there for half and hour and after knocking on the door like a mad woman, he'll respond.  However, the next time I go in to the bathroom I will see a human shape outlined in the tub - our water is very rusty, and there will be a blob of white with arm shapes and the rest of the tub is orange.  Hahahaha.)  Hopefully the wave of flu is over for now and the wee one avoids any other major outbreaks to come...

Speaking of squirrels...last weekend there was a squirrel out back that was under our willow tree.  When it had not moved for several hours, I grabbed a stick (that could be used to poke at the squirrel or defend myself from the squirrel, depending on the need at the time) and headed out back to see what was up.  The critter looked as if it had just jumped from the tree and was ready to scamper but it wasn't going anywhere, as it was dead.  (A quick stick poking confirmed rigormortis had set in.)  It had landed perfectly and it looked quite normal and healthy.  No bite marks, no blows to the head, no outside damage at all.   I went in to tell my husband he had to go get the dead squirrel and take care of it.  He responded like all males would in this situation, "Mrphwllllll...."   (Not sure what that meant nor could I understand the response, but I got the gist that he was not going to do a damned thing about any dead squirrel any time soon...)   The problem took care of itself, or so it seems.  The squirrel was gone the next day, probably carried off by a large bird or fox or some type of critter on an adventure. 

I helped my neighbor get their internet working this week, and yesterday Sue brought me a plate of cookies and a lovely 'thank you' card and an adorable mum plant in a pumpkin container.  Very sweet of her!   I walked out with her to chat a bit and when I came back in the house more than half the cookies were gone!!  All the kids were home and the family was just sitting there in the living room looking all innocent and someone said, "What cookies?" 

November 2, 2009 - Another month already?  No...no...not possible.  It's all an illusion, I'm sure.  

Yesterday was a productive day for me.  Sheets got washed, laundry got done, beds got made, and things got cleaned.  I lifted them bales and toted them barges like crazy all day long.  I felt quite proud of all I did yesterday, but as I crawled into my clean fluffy bed my body and several groups of muscles mentioned in a loud voice, "Um, Ouch!"  My brain took several minutes to slap me upside the head in protest and lecture me about the fact that one cannot go from a complete sloth like prone position in life to competing in the Housework Olympics without suffering some physical pain.  I countered with, "So where was this glorious advice today when I was being Super Suzy Homemaker?"  My brain had no comment.

I took down all my Halloween decorations yesterday and put up my Thanksgiving decorations.  I feel bad for Thanksgiving as it's almost squeezed out by Christmas right after Halloween.  I like to give the pilgrims and the turkeys fair air time.  When I was a the store yesterday, they were already playing CHRISTMAS MUSIC!?!?  Oy vay.  People were running around the store with 'half off' Halloween decorations crammed in their carts while "White Christmas" is playing overhead.  'Twas a picture, for sure. 

The children spent Saturday night together and Sunday having a SIB FEST.  I adore how they like to spend time together.  It   makes a Momma proud that her chicks can all share the same general area without gouging each other's eyes out.  My daughter needed "brother time" since she's just started a new job and was stressed from that plus the whole ordeal of applying for graduate school and preparing to take her GRE has been freaking her out.  The wee one needed sibling time because he's alone all week in this little house and misses his brother and sister and human interaction in general.  My oldest was the kind sponsor of this event.  Bless 'em all. 

Last night was very fall-like and peaceful as I sat in the pen with the doggies waiting for them to finish their business.  The moon was out and the sky overhead was clear and bright, plus there was a low layer blanket of haze/smoke from many smoldering burning leaf piles in the neighborhood.  It truly felt like fall and smelled like fall.  (It was a very nice moment in time for me but it's hard to wax poetic about such a moment when the background includes dogs squatting...)

November 3, 2009 - The black birds or starlings (what ever they are) have been grouping up for the fly South (I assume to fly South, it could just be Bird Convention Month or they are extremely lonely) and there are thousands of them, I swear.  They make such a noise!  To the West of me (one of their favorite gathering places) it currently sounds like a football stadium filled with Rice Krispies and milk.  Amazing.  They can blacken the sky when they take off in groups.  Add the Sandhill Cranes flying around (hundreds of them) and you have a concert in Bird by Mother Nature.  Awesome.

My two surviving cats will go out sometimes at night and I believe they hang around with other cats in the neighborhood.  (I never hear cat fights or see fur flying or see the results of cat brawls, so I am convinced they just meet in the neighbor's back yard to drink little cat beers, and say "Yep" a lot.)  This morning when I let the dogs out to do their thing, they went nuts.   A cat was sitting in the moonlight, all patient like and waiting.  (I had not let the kitties out last night...)  Apparently  he was waiting for my cats.  The dogs had fits, barking and trying to scale the fence.  The cat just sat there drinking his little cat beer ignoring my dogs.  I finally had to drag them in the house to shut them up.  When I got the dogs in, both cats were up on the washer staring out the window at their buddy.  They looked at me with big old cat eyes, so I let them out to go hang with their friend.  The dogs have been on high alert ever since...

November 3 1/2, 2009 - Something happened last night that I will forever laugh about, or will laugh about as long as I remember it as I do tend to forget things.  I debated if I would ‘blog’ about it – and decided I would since #1) it’s my blog and I'll blog if I want to,  #2) I found it quite hilarious, and #3) it is America after all…I can say disgusting things all I want.  Plus I am sure something like this has happened to more people than just me.  Stuff I write about in my blog has had to have happened to other people as well, they just have the common decency not to blab all over the interweb about it.

I made my son load the dryer last night.  As he is loading it, he comes out with a shirt and says, “There’s fluff all over the place!” showing us the shirt and the debris clinging to it.  “You left a Kleenex in your pocket!” I accused like a good Mother should.  “I’m a 16 year old male, Mom – have you ever seen me use a Kleenex?!” he said in a matter of fact voice.  (OK, he had me there…and that in itself made me laugh.)  I told him not to worry about the Kleenex fluff and just load the dryer and the lint filter would catch it.

I went out before the dryer was done to pull out a few shirts I did not want to fully dry.  When I opened the door, a plume of fuzzy material exploded out.  “What the ….” I began to swear.  I pulled out the lint trap and it was PACKED so FULL of fluffy white that it was at least two inches thick and felt like a mini down comforter.  The cats could have used it as a sleeping bag it was so thick and huge!!  I mumbled and pondered as I peeled it off the lint filter and went to get the vacuum.  I swept up the fiber explosion and let the load finish drying.

(This would be a good time to review the fact that I have issues with bladder control, but only when I cough, sneeze, or laugh too hard.  Or bend over.  Or move too fast   We all get to that age where your sphincter muscles get a “Maxine” type “I don’t care anymore” attitude and randomly decide when or when not to function. That is why there are such products as Poise pads -but I digress…)

As I was folding the laundry, I pulled out a little empty pouch-type thing and started laughing.  It was ME who had left a pad in my skirt pocket!!  I was the culprit!  I could not bring myself at the time to admit this to my son.  I did that this morning because he’s always honest with me, even if it’s after the fact.  So while my sister was at my house this morning, I confessed to both of them.  As he was walking out the door for school shaking his head, he said, “I figured half as much…a Kleenex, yeah right!”

*After my friend Dan read this, he wrote to me that "...It ends up looking like a stuffed animal puked his guts out and then exploded..."   That is the voice of experience talking.  Obviously this has happened before to other people.

November 6, 2009 - It just dawned on me this morning that there are people out there who know how to make boots.  (We won't even begin to go down the path that led me to that thought...)   Without people who know how to make boots, can you imagine the cases of frostbitten toes and hypothermia?!  I would have no clue on where to start to make a boot.   Any attempt on my part to make a boot would resemble a Kleenex box with duct tape.   There are people who know how to do all sorts of things I could never even begin to do.  What a wonderful thing!  How cool are humans?  Such diversity!!   Viva Humans!  So at 5:30 in the morning I was in the dog's poop pen looking at the stars and feeling very thankful for boot makes and just being amazed at the human mind in general.  That is a nice,warm, cozy feeling at 5:30 a.m. on a very frosty morning.

I keep a pair of reading glasses at work and one at home.   My home pair exploded Wednesday night after two years of very extensive use (mainly in the bathroom - a.k.a. library - where I'm sure all that steam and the like was not good for the poor things...)  I stopped on the way home last night at the local pharmacy to get a new pair.  My former exploded glasses were +1, my work reading glasses are +1.5, and the pair I picked up last night are set to stun, baby!  They are +2.25!   As I was checking out the pharmacist behind the counter said, "It's sad when you finally realize you are so old you need reading glasses..."  (She was not being rude, mind you, I know her and she, too, had on a pair...)  I know I resisted getting reading glasses for the longest time, but there will come a time when the inability to read the small print will force you to buy a pair.  I believe it's the first real AARP moment we all will have eventually...you can eat all the carrots you want, honey - you're gonna need reading glasses sooner or later. 

November 9, 2009 - After watching the antics of the four teenaged squirrels that live in the willow tree out back for the last few days, it is no longer a mystery why their mother fell out of the tree dead.  The little boogers are driving the poor dogs crazy.  They race around the yard and up the tree then down the tree then around the yard as they nip at each other's hind quarters with glee...cripes. 

The dogs were watching me scoop their poop the other day.  I wonder if dogs wonder if humans do this because we have some type of odd feces fetish?  Perhaps they think humans have an extensive pooh collection?  The way their heads were tilted to one side as they watched me clean up after them, it was as if I could almost hear them saying, "...After all, I do have quite a large collection of half eaten hairy raw hide bones under the bed, so I suppose we all have our hobbies...I won't throw any rocks!" 

My BFF Vickie sent me a picture of herself and her boyfriend, and it was so good to see her.   I believe she looked divine!  I would prefer to see her in person but the picture was nice, too.  HUGS to Vickie, if you are reading this...You are more beautiful than ever!

Since I got my super duper reading glasses that can spot a fly on the neighbor's house, I decided to check all the medicines we own.  Holy crap, I'm glad I did!  Many were expired.  Some were VERY expired.  Suddenly I have lots of room in the medicine cabinet.  Soon some lucky landfill isn't going to have issues with hemorrhoids, I tell you what.

November 15, 2009 - The Kalamazoo Holiday Parade was on Saturday.  My wee one was marching.  Their band was lead in for Santa.  I love a good parade.  I get quite excited at parades.   I tend to scream at the local news people who are in the parade.  I jump up and down and clap with the bands.  I do so love a parade.  This year was a LONG parade!  At least two hours worth of bands, floats, cub scouts, girl scouts, local churches, etc.  Plus I've never seen it so PACKED downtown as it was this year.   My oldest son had to park a mile away to get to us!!  (We drove him back to his car after the parade.)  All in all Saturday was a marvelous day all around.  I took my daughter with me when I went to the store.  We had a hoot.

November 19, 2009 - My friend Jane gave me a pair of jammies with snowmen on them and the phrase "Let it Snow" all over the pants. I was wearing them the other morning whilst watching for inbound space debris from the Leonid meteor shower in the early hours of the morning.  I would go back out from time to time to see if I could see more meteors and was sitting there as the sun came up and could read the print on my pants.  I read the word 'mous' and then grabbed the pants and looked at the pictures and said out loud, "Those are not mice, those are snowmen!"  Then it hit me.  I was reading the word 'snow' upside down, which turns out to be 'mous' - UG!  Either I'm just not that bright or I should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery too early in the morning...

I also did another fun thing (and I am basing the use of the word 'fun' on the reaction of the dogs) while meteor watching.  I groped my way out in the dark and got my hand on the handle of my super deluxe plastic star gazing chair, thinking I was grabbing the furthest handle of said chair, and I plopped my butt down with gusto where my brain assumed it should go based on my left hand grip, totally missing the chair and ending up on the ground since I had grabbed the first handle, not the furthest.  The dogs thought this was GRAND FUN that I would get down on their level in their poop pen with them.  They didn't offer to help me up either. We watched for meteors together for a while since I was down on the ground anyway...

I have started planning my Thanksgiving dinner and I did a test run on pumpkin bread that my wee one wants for Turkey Day.  It was quite good. (He announced that I have to put CHOCOLATE CHIPS in the 'real' bread for Thanksgiving.  Uck.  Chocolate chips in pumpkin bread?!?!?)   I had mixed the recipe all up, put it in loaf pans, shoved it in the oven and then instantly remembered I did NOT put in the vegetable oil it called for.  I got the pans out and mixed in the oil and put the loaf pans back in and it came out pretty delicious.  However, I wonder how it would have been with out the oil?  I bet it would have been just as good. The oil bothers my tummy.

Work has been CRAZY but I love it.  The pressure is a good kind that keeps you constantly busy.  Hard to focus with all the chaos, but it still feels good to my brain which tends to thrive on chaos as opposed to neat and orderly things. 

I have been having such odd dreams as of late, and I would really love to know what causes the different types of dreams one has at night.  My dream last night was almost a 'part two' from the night before - seamless carryover.  I am not upset by this as it was a nice stream of thought I found quite pleasant, but my dreams are so DETAILED that I wonder when my poor dear brain gets any rest.  I have had many epiphanies whilst dreaming and figured out a lot of issues due to dreams, so I'm sure dreams serve an actual purpose.  However, I am convinced there are time they are just presented for entertainment purposes and while you are distracted watching these types of fluffy dreams, your brain crawls into a back room and sleeps...

November 29, 2009 - It has been a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday weekend and a sad one as well.  One of my son's classmates was killed in an auto accident Friday night.  This makes me so sad - youth has such potential, and when a life is taken so young it just makes your stomach ache. Many prayers go out to the family and friends of Megan. 

Thanksgiving Day itself was marvelous. I called my Aunt Jean in the morning, and she seemed in good spirits. They were going out to my cousin Dan's house for dinner. Aunt Jean is like my second Mom, and I like it when she seems happy and I like it when she can make me laugh. I talked to my sister for a bit and we lamented the fact we felt like we had not cooked ENOUGH, even though we fixed enough to feed several small third world nations.  I remember my Mom making TONS of food for family get together as I grew up - cookies, breads, you name it.  I have always OVER MADE so much food over the years and I think it's a genetic thing - no wait, a psychological thing!  This year I calculated the MTDEP (see below) and what we would eat as opposed to what was overkill and I stayed within an acceptable range.  That was VERY HARD FOR ME TO DO.  I fretted there would not be enough and I didn't fix enough and...Humans, go figure.

The turkey got done about 45 minutes sooner than my "Master Thanksgiving Day Evil Plan" had anticipated.  (Sandy can't do math, this is obvious.)  However, all came together like butta and it was a nice time.   My Mother in Law and Sister in Law shared our bounty.  We were full and content and we laughed at the kids who can be quite entertaining.  The dogs were also thankful since they got many hand outs during the course of the meal.  Nothing is sweeter to observe than Grandma trying to covertly slip the dogs each a nice piece of turkey 'on the side' - the dogs were in heaven.  Mom and Carol left with a plate of food and fun was had by all.  We bloated around the rest of the day.  (As the picture shows, Jake the 90 lb. dog thinks he deserved to chill with the rest of the family.)  Jake is no lap dog, but try telling him that...

The day before Thanksgiving my son texted me at work.  "Sooooooo....there was a fire in the girls bathroom and now we're all in the PAC (auditorium) 'cause we can't go back into the band room 'cause of smoke and stuff..."  He told me later he was coming back from lunch and he saw smoke billowing out of the girl's bathroom and people running in with fire extinguishers and someone pulled the alarm to summon the local fire department.  That in itself was exciting enough for any 16 year old for one day but he called me when he got home to tell me more.  "Soooooooo....Dom (his friend) was on his way to the guidance office when this girl broke her water and collapsed in the hallway right there and went into labor..."  So my son was quite worked up Wednesday evening.  Dom's facebook status read, "All hail the firebaby overlords..." which made me laugh quite hard.

On Friday my husband took us to dinner at CC's, a pizza place where you can eat pizza until you explode.  The rule in my house is SANDY DOES NOT COOK the three days following Thanksgiving.  After CC's, we went and picked out several new fish for the fish tank.  Matthew (who is our huge goldfish) has been 'depressed' for several weeks and we figured shoving more fish in the tank would cheer him up.  It seems to have worked.  Matthew has not been in his 'sad' corner since the new goldfish and zebra danios have been added. 

So now I am sitting here in the quiet of my home, sipping 'Jamaican Me Crazy' coffee which is divine, almost as good as 'White Heather' from Schuil's in Grand Rapids.  My husband is working and my wee one is still sleeping.  I don't get any 'alone' time anymore so I enjoy these moments where it's just me and the clacking of keys and the snoring of dogs on the couch. I was greeted by an orange barrel cone thingy behind my car this morning.   I am sure one of my friends or my son's friends thought this was grand fun to swipe of of those from a road construction site and take it for a ride and place it in our driveway.  I will call the company listed on the side of it tomorrow, but for now - hey, free orange cone thingy...

December 2, 2009 - The weather outside is frightful!  (Well, it's suppose to be tomorrow, and I like that!!)  I am looking forward to snow.  I always look forward to snow which explains why everyone grumbles and throws stuff at me this time of year.  The darker and snowier it gets, the bubblier I get (and I'm pretty darned bubbly to begin with...)

Yesterday I wore a black shirt, a flowered skirt, and a bright red fuzzy coat with snowflakes on it.  I caught a glimpse of myself at the windows at work and laughed.  Add to that picture my old brown granny shoes and my albino white legs and I was the epitome of BAG LADY.   Hahahha.  However, that look suits me so I wore it with pride...It reminded me of when I was little and the weekends my Mom would go for nature walks (which later I understood to be her way of escaping our home/us kids/my Dad and since she didn't drive, she had to walk).  She would suit up in her old shoes, her oldest dress, old sweater vests, old hat, Grandpa's cane, and meander off.  I come from a proud lineage of Bag Ladies.

My daughter and her boyfriend and my wee one decorated our little tree on Sunday. Muffy decided early on that the tree was HIS tree and took over the whole operation.  I will miss Stewie eating the ornaments, however.  It was a very fun weekend with the kids.  I have enjoyed my kids so much over their life spans.  They teach me daily and make me laugh daily and make me think and break my heart and then fix that heart.  How they turned out the way they did still amazes me...will always amaze me.  

Coming home from work was pleasant last night as I walked into a house smelling like pine tree (from a candle) and everything in it's place (rare) and all the Christmas lights lit up.  Ah, I love this time of year.  I will love it even more if we get the snow they predict tomorrow and over the next few days.  All will be Merry and Bright.

December 4, 2009 - I just watched my wee one drive out of the driveway for his first time solo on icy roads.  UG.  My uterus hurts.   I told him to call me as soon as he was safe in the High School parking lot. 

We got a little snow, but up North of us got way more.  Lake effect snow bands are moody creatures and missed us this time around.  However, it is icy on the roads.  Kia was thrilled this morning when I let the dogs go potty.  She pranced around and tried to get her brother to play, but Jake is four years old, after all, and a male, and would rather just sit in front of the heater than romp in any white cold stuff in his poop pen with a spastic sister. 

My wee one said their classmate's funeral yesterday was beautiful and touching.  I am glad the band played.   I am glad they got to say goodbye in a grand fashion.  I just wish we could all have a marching band escort us someplace while we were still alive as opposed to waiting until we are gone.

The wee one just called and he made it safely to school.  I was relieved.  Then right after I hung up, the phone rang again.  It was his number.  I answered, but all I could hear was the crunching of someone walking and muffled talking.  He had "butt dialed" me, as it were.  No doubt he shoved his phone in is pocket and it redialed our number.   For ten minutes I was shouting into the phone at him but all I hear is him complaining to his friends about his Mom worrying too much and waking him up early, etc.   Hahaha.  I can't wait to razz him tonight.  He is notorious for 'butt dialing' people.  Once we had a long voice mail from his phone and could hear him talking in class.  Another time he 'butt dialed' and his Dad answered and did the same thing I did - shouted at him for ten minutes but the wee one never heard him yelling.   Fodder for harassment, I'd say.

December 8, 2009 - Muffy keeps laying on the tree skirt which hides the tree light timer and in turn this keeps reprogramming my lights.   Time to tie the timer up higher in the tree, I suppose.  Muffy has been having issues lately - and I'm not sure they are even issues.  He's 'acting out' and being young again.  I don't mind this.  It's good to see him feeling to good for his old age, or maybe it's sad because he is slipping into cat dementia?  Either way, the boy has been a pain in the buttocks.  He ate the potstickers on Saturday night that were up on the counter...he's is determined he will reach the top of the 'fridge where the butter is stored.  Suddenly old Muffy has wings.  He sleeps on my head at night and demands attention. 

Last night I let the dogs out for one last potty break before I went to bed and they instantly went on high alert.   Normally if it's a deer, I can hear said deer clomping in the roadway or galloping past the dog pen but I heard nothing.  The dogs, however, were growling and barking at something that was on the move.  Finally a car passed and I could see it was a cat that was running in the front of the yard.  I started calling it since I assumed it was Taffy.  After a long yodel of KITTY KITTY KITTY that hit every octave known to man, the cat still did not come up to be let in.  I said out loud to the general directed of the critter, "I don't care, stay out all night!" and made loud Motherly disgust sounds under my breath.  As I turned to come in the door, there was Taffy inside in the doorway, looking at me as if to say, "Did you call or something?"  I have no idea what I was yelling at in the yard.  I'm sure it had a good laugh at my expense, or the neighbors did at least. 

I had dinner with my High School buddies last night.  It's always such a hoot to get together with them.   We are only together for an hour or so, but it lifts the spirits.  We are laughing constantly and we tend to get loud.  Driving home was nice since it was spitting snow and there are lots of Christmas lights up.  (People went really heavy on the white theme this year I notice.  They like the look of white or they waited too long to get their lights at the store - I'm thinking it's the latter...)  Of course, no one can beat our display of randomly thrown up lights!  I am sure people drive from miles around to see ours!  Hahahaha...  "Look Martha, it's so random and mismatched it HAS to be intentional!" 

December 9, 2009 - Last night it was windy and snowing and the dogs went out in the fresh snow and were ecstatic.  They nipped at the fresh snow and pranced around like wood nymphs, then they would have an outright sibling smack down by throwing their bodies into each other mid air and falling to the ground to wrestle.   They would then rest, prance like wood nymphs as they ate snow, and start the wrestling routine all over again. They were quite happy with the new development.

This morning they were ready to go prance and act like idiots.  I swung open the door and they ran out hell bent for leather into mud and rain and lightening.  They both sat down immediately on the cement blocks by the door and looked at me with an accusing stare as if to say, "Pardon us, but I do believe something is amiss..."  

Now it's raining and I can tell by the cars going by that the roads are slushy.  I got the wee one up early so he can drive with caution on the way to school.  They have blizzard warnings for the side of the state nearest Lake Michigan for later today since the wind is suppose to kick in and the temperatures will drop.  Winter has finally arrived.

December 20, 2009 - Thursday was my wee one's Christmas Concert.  My daughter and her boyfriend and my mother in law all came along.   Very festive way to start the Christmas season. 

Friday was physical inventory at work.  Physical inventory is just that - physical inventory...you crawl around and count stuff.  We made a valiant effort to have an accurate inventory.  I am not sure of the final results.  I was at the shop from 6:45 am to 7:00 pm on Friday.   Others had to stay later...

Saturday was A HOOT!  My daughter wanted to make cookies, so I decided she was going to make 'em from scratch!   She went with me to the store and we pushed our way through a very crowded grocery store to get the stuff we needed.  The parking lot was a sea of cars!  Ug.   People seemed to be in good spirits, however.  I grabbed a sausage log and serenaded my daughter. 

She made a double batch of M &M cookies and a double batch of peanut butter kiss cookies.  As she did that, I stood by and gave advice and drank beer.  I have not consumed that much beer in over a decade.  I must say, it was fun. The boys made us a taco supper, and we watched a movie.  After that the kids tried to keep me away from "drunk typing" on the computer and "drunk phone calls" - they failed miserably.  I called my BFF Vickie in Florida so the kids could tell her Merry Christmas and I announced to the world on Facebook that I was feeling no pain.  I also slept very soundly last night...

Today was spent doing laundry and dusting.  Nothing too exciting.  It is spitting snow, which is nice.   All is Merry and Bright.  Considering how much beer I put in my belly the night before, I didn't feel bad at all today. 

December 22, 2009 - I will be the first to admit I talk to myself in my car on the way home from work.  Normally not on the way to work, but I've been known to belt out a tune or two or just randomly talk to my car or in my car to myself (for no reason, really) on the way home.  I don't consider this a sign of dementia, mind you.  I consider this time alone with "me" and if I want to blab like an idiot, I often do just that.

Last night I had to go to the grocery store before I came home, so I took the back way in to town from work.  I had the Christmas music cranked up high and was singing along.  As I approached the backside of my little town, I noticed a house that had a display lit ever so nicely that included seven deer.  "How life like!" I said out loud, "how utterly beautiful!"  Then one of the 'statue' deer turned and looked at me in a very creepy manner.  "Holy Crap!" I exclaimed as I drove out of sight, "they are REAL DEER!"  The mini herd was up at the bird feeders just having a wonderful time eating up all the birdy food that was only a few feet from the road.   It made me laugh after I got over the initial shock.  (That face of the deer that looked at me still looms in my mind.  "You ain't seein' nothin', lady - I know where you live - just keep drivin'."  Actually, it was kind of scary now that I think back on it...)

My son and his friend went in to town after supper to get gas, and when they got home they reported a near brush with a deer as well.  "It was just THERE, Mom - from no where!"  (My son was quite excited.  Scared, probably - I would be, too, if I had a deer run out in front of me without even having time to react.  I asked the boys if they wet themselves from the shock...)

Then my doggies chased off deer that were gathered out front last night.  I am assuming by now there is a conspiracy and the deer are taking over.  They gather in small groups for now, but will eventually unite to form a super group that will dominate the world.  Hooves hurt, people.  We will be forced to do their bidding...

December 27, 2009 - Ah, the weekend draws to a close.   It's early in the morning and I bask in the glow of a wonderful holiday with my family.  I am a blessed person.  I don't take this fact for granted.  I have a new computer chair to plop in while I type this.  HURRAY!  Sitting on an old wooden kitchen chair all this time was taking a toll on my buttocks. 

My oldest came over to spend the long weekend starting on Wednesday night.  (As you can see from the picture above, the dogs were ever so glad to had someone warm to share the couch with for naps.)   It was game fest weekend up in his little brother's room.  They had played MANY hours of video games in the last four days.  I am surprised their hands have not fallen off or their wrists have not exploded from excessive game controller use. 

Christmas Eve day my daughter helped me take the dogs to the vet for their three year rabies shots and new licenses.  Jake weighs 85 pounds and Kia weighs 73 pounds.  (The vet suggested the dogs go on a diet!  Imagine that... Apparently they could both stand to lose ten pounds each.)  Both dogs had new 'bling' for Christmas Eve.  The new tags were quite pretty and reflected the Christmas lights.  I forgot to take my purse when we went to the vets, only taking my wallet, and my money for the Humane Shelter cat nip bags was still at home.  Ug.  It's not Christmas unless you get the cats hopped up on catnip!  I called my son and made him bring me the cash so we could get the catnip bags.  Phew.  Christmas was saved!

Christmas Eve was spent with my sister and my niece.  We had plenty of cheese based food products.  My sister brought me homemade shortbread with almond frosting.  I do so love frosting and I adore shortbread, so when you put the two together...OH MY GOSH!  Yum!  I must have eaten half of what she brought before she had her coat off.  (Oy Vay, I paid the price later that night.  My belly let me know exactly how disgusted it was with me.)  

After my sister and niece went home, my daughter broke out the non-alcoholic bubbling juice.  She asked, "Does anyone want any Bubbling Raspberry Spumante?"  (With the word spumante pronounced SPU-MANT with no "ee" sound at the end.)  We had a good laugh over that and harassed her to no end.

Christmas Morning...Jake the Dog tried his best to wake up my daughter.  He knew there was something under the tree for him so he wanted everyone UP NOW.  My oldest, my daughter, and my husband and myself sat for a while watching poorly done Christmas videos on VH1 from the 1980s while we waited for my youngest to wake up.  Finally I banged pans together under the vent to in his bedroom floor and we cranked up the music as loud as the structural integrity of the house would allow to wake him up. 

It was a small Christmas - present wise this year - due to the financial issues.  It didn't seem to matter much to anyone.  The pack of underwear was greeted with as much joy as a new car would have been. Big brother was VERY good to all of us, however.  He made his sister cry.   (She had borrowed money from him for grad school testing and survival in general and he 'pardoned' her debt in full.)  He also took us out to eat Chinese on Christmas Day.  No cooking for Mom!

It had been raining on Christmas day and the 'white Christmas' didn't show up until yesterday.  Lots of fluffy white snow to cover up the fact I had not kept up with the dog pen debris.   Smile.  The kids decided to stay one more night here - so right now on the living room floor is my daughter and her boyfriend, and big brother is upstairs in the extra bed. 

Today I will have to fix a real meal instead of anything laced with cheese or sugar.  I am shooting for a ham dinner this afternoon.  I am also sort of sad this morning about issues in our families...family members fighting over petty things...marriages falling apart.  Ug.   The worst part is you can't do anything about those situations.  You can't just snap your fingers and say, "You there - quit being stupid and shape up!" or "You two - work it out and stop being stupid!"  I have yet to reach any level of magic to have any influence on those around me...  In situations like these, well - they have to figure it out on their own but you wish with all your heart that they would stop being so over dramatic about it and just STOP being STUPID.

My BFF in Florida and her boyfriend found out on Christmas Morning that his father had just passed away from heart issues.  Bob is up here now with his family.  Vickie had to stay down in Florida and I know it's just eating away at her.  I can't make either one of them feel better, but I hope they know I love them. 

December 28, 2009 - My youngest got me the movie "UP" by Pixar.   Oh my...we watched it yesterday afternoon and I bawled through the whole thing.   Very touching movie.  (I heard my son say to his siblings, "See, I told you she'd like it!") 

Our neighbor Denise made us homemade cinnamon rolls and brought them over Christmas morning, hot from the oven.  Yum.  I had her pan washed and ready to go back to her.  I put that pan on the kitchen table.  Muffy found said pan and made himself at home.  Hahaha.   After re-washing it will be returned to her with this picture...

December 29, 2009 - I just ate a sandwich of bologna spread.  I got the spread for my husband's lunches but the expiration date was yesterday (which was in small print so I couldn't see it without reading glasses) hence we all took huge sandwiches of the stuff to use it up.  I can tell you one thing for certain - bologna spread tastes a heck of a lot better going down than it does belching it up…

Speaking of not being able to see the small print… I needed new shoe laces a while back.  Mind you, I have not purchased shoe laces in centuries and generations.  My Mom had tons in "stock" that we lived off of for years and years.  My husband's Mom also would bring us some now and then from her garage sale adventures.  I had no need to buy new shoe laces for decades.   Honestly.  However, our stockpile had dwindled to nothing and I was forced to buy shoe laces for my work shoes.  I went to the store and forgot my reading glasses.   One never stops learning (or realizing that they never learned a particular thing, in this case.)  I did not know how to judge what size to buy.  I couldn't read the nifty tiny little instruction on the back of the package, so I just grabbed a pair of laces that I thought would work.  They turned out to be too long for my shoes so I went to work the next day with a quadruple knot to keep them from flapping.  Then I got the brainy idea to cut them down.  DUH.  By noon the next day they looked like firecrackers had exploded at the end of the lace. (There is a reason they put those nifty plastic little ends on shoes laces - it's so clear to me now.)  I went back to the store that night with my exploding pom pom laces and took my reading glasses and found a pair that fit and learned how to judge size for a shoe lace. After all that excitement, the urge to buy a pair of shoes with a Velcro flap was strong in this one…

I am having a hard time comprehending that it's the end of 2009 already if I stop and think about it specifically. (Didn't I just graduate from High School?  Didn't I just spend hours chasing after falling leaves while waiting for the elementary bus?)  Goodness… I am very glad time compresses in our brain.   We as humans have issues comprehending time in general- so our brain (or at least mine) just squishes everything together so we don't go insane trying to figure it all out.   (But we do eventually go insane trying to figure it out because we are human after all and humans think they have such great brains and should be able to understand everything even if it ends up killing us...) Our brain's ability to play tricks on our own sense of time is why we can gaze out into the night sky and enjoy the view without our head blowing off.  That is why it still feels like we just graduated or spent all day in the sandbox as a child.  I will guess that my brain will eventually one day go the way of my Mom's and Grandpa's minds- get lost within itself, but until then I do enjoy the mush that is my memories.

I have been listening to 'Here Come the Mummies' all day. It's sort of a tongue in cheek band - they dress up as mummies, but they are SO GOOD.   Oh my.  Good brass.  They are an electrified funk rock band which harkens me back to my 70s youth. Their lyrics are all in double entendre fashion, so it could go several ways - but they sound divine. That is a band that would sound much better live than on an album.

December 30, 2009 - Today I will go to the doctors to find out if my ears/eyes/nose/throat/chest are OK.  (My bet is that they are not - thus the doctor visit trip...)  I am pretty sure that I've been producing such an abundance of snot from every orifice north of my navel that local small villages should be concerned about incoming floods.  I came home early from work yesterday and crawled into bed and dozed.  My husband made supper while I rested.  I ate supper and went back to bed.  I still feel like I could fall off my chair and sleep.  Going to the doctors will be a good thing.  It's not so much the snot that bothers me as the 'dizzy' feeling I have as well.  Inner ear infection?  My normal mental state?  You be the judge.

Today will be the last work day for the year.   Hurray.  I am hoping the kids will all come over for New Year's Eve and play games and watch movies, but we'll see.  (When you are an adult kid, I imagine spending New Year's Eve with your 'rents is considered lame.) 

December 31, 2009 - The kids are all coming over for New Year's Eve.   Apparently hanging with us is not as lame as I thought.  My Aunt mentioned that I will get the kids sick since I am sick, but I'm pretty sure that they are the ones who got me sick in the first place.  Fair is fair.  I am now on antibiotics, so hopefully I won't cootie them up too bad.  Smile.  Both of the adult kids were hesitant sounding when they heard I didn't feel well, so maybe they will change their minds...

Yesterday when I went to the doctors I had the newest doctor at that practice.  I had not seen him before myself, but my son had seen him in October and he seemed to have a good personality when I went in with my kidlette for that visit, so I was looking forward to having him as my doctor. 

I grabbed an AARP magazine to read while I was waiting in the room, and was skimming over an article about Sting (originally from the rock group The Police) and it said that Sting was 58 years old!  I read that just before he walked in and when he was in the door I barked, "Holy Crap - Sting is 58!!!"  The doctor's eyebrows did funny things and he said, "Um, what?"  "Sting from the Police is 58!  Man!  Who would have thunk it!"  I said as I shook the AARP magazine at him.  He threw his head back and laughed.  Those were my first words to my new doctor.  I'm sure there is a note now on my file that warns people about the "random bursts of nothingness that may spew forth from this one..."

My ears are not infected but the ear drums are sucked in (from sniffing too much to clear snot) and I have a sinus infection (knew that) and I'm now on an antibiotic to help fight the good fight.  I had a temp when I went in.  I always feel better when something looks 'really' wrong when you go to a doctor so you don't appear too whiny.  My blood pressure was high and he mentioned that.  He looked back at my last few visits and said, "OK, I'll let you off the hook this time..."  I told him it had nothing at all to do with the pot and a half of coffee I drank before I got there plus the half dozen donuts I consumed at work for breakfast, not to mention the fact that "I has a fever!"

So, this is the end of 2009.  What can we say about 2009? 

It went by too fast...

we cried...

we laughed...

we lost loved ones...

we made new friends...

we were stupid...

we learned so much...

we loved...

we hated...

we survived...

(And isn't that really all one can hope for in the first place?)

Happy New Year!

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