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The Archives ... formerly known as "All the Crap I've Written in the Diary Prior to Today, but it was Taking Too Damned Long to Load in a Browser Window"   Blogging at it's Finest.  If it doesn't say "Wet Sands" it isn't a Blog!

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Archives 2007

(i'm being very optimistic that I'll live til the end of the year to create all these bookmarks ahead of time, aren't I?)

January 02 2008 - Ah,a New Year.  Amazing how time just rips past you at the speed of light! 

These pictures were taken at midnight on New Years Eve/Day.  It was snowing quite hard.   The dogs seemed so thrilled to have new fresh snow to play in.  I believe all dogs treat a fresh layer of snow like an artist treats a new canvas...or, they just consider a fresh layer of snow just a whole new place to poop. 

January 11 2008 - It's been raining an we lost all of our snow, and we had a lot of snow.  When it rains and snow melts, it tends to cause flooding situations.  Ah, Michigan.   This morning, however, the wind is cold again and the rain wants so desperately to be snow, I can just feel it.  It's 'pelty' rain, and we all know rain that pelts is just the gateway rain to snow.

My motto this new year is "If it's on the ground (and doesn't belong there) just pick it up!" Basically, it's a 'just do it' sort of statement, but Nike beat me to that one...  I know, I've said that before, claiming it's one of the things I live by but it's so easy to forget what you think you believe in.  I have been mired in depression for two months now, and I finally decided it was time to piss or get off the pot. Depression has a way of freezing you in time.  (If you've never been depressed, then you probably have no clue what I'm talking about, and I want to know your secret...)  

If you don't deal with your emotional issues, they just get layered and compressed in your brain and your brain has no room for layered repressed stuff, so it sends it off to storage units along your spine and other places in your body where it gets forgotten as it wasn't properly inventoried in the first place, and it never gets dealt with by your rational center.  This causes an issue when an completely innocent brain function happens to stumble upon a stash of repressed and unresolved issues...and then the crap hits the fan. 

So I will come to terms with my 'fake' depression and deal with it.  I say 'fake' depression as it's not valid - I have a house and kids and people who love me and pets that make me laugh and I'm far from starving.  I have no REAL thing to be depressed about, but we as humans can get all confused about life sometimes.  Our priorities get off kilter and we tend to dwell on issues that are not, in fact, issues at all. 

So, the other day I decided I was sinking further in to a hole that I knew perfectly well how to get out of, so I am getting out of it.  Oh sure, I'm older and it's harder to get out of holes, but I'm climbing out at a nice pace.  I know it was all cumulative issues directly related to work...but when you obsess about one thing, it's like a black hole - drawing more 'issues' in to the mix.  Sigh.  We have an offsite meeting with our new owners in two weeks, so it will be nice to hear what is in the works for my place of employment.  Of course, I immediately think of Auschwitz when ever anyone mentions 'off site meeting' and picture them getting us all in a room and turning on the gas...but that is being so negative and I digress... 

Other than that, life has been good so far all year.  The kids are back in college/school and life continues on.  I force myself to read the news every morning lately, only because that was one of my issues - that I couldn't deal with how the world seems to be falling apart so I avoided it and hid from it.  You can't avoid it.  You can't judge other people and ignore the world, but you can help out where you can to keep others from having problems or going in a direction that is not a good direction. 

I went to the doctors after the first of the year to get stitches out of my head (had a cyst removed) and she said in a matter of fact voice, "So, when are you going back on Weight Watchers?"  I laughed out loud.  "We've been back on it for a week!"  I stated.  I think she noticed my weight gain.  I've noticed my weight gain.  All three of us (my husband and I and my oldest son) fell off the WW wagon a month or so ago and now we're back on it.  We all feel better not eating entire planets every day.  Food for us as a family is definitely a comfort thing during stressful times.  Plus it tastes so darned good.  Over Christmas we didn't watch our intake AT ALL.  If you heard a vacuum sound ringing in your ears, it was us sucking up food.

My dogs are so confused over the fact all the cars are parked right out front.  We normally park to the side of the house, but due to the large amount of rain induced sink holes, we've all been parking on stable ground. They will catch the reflection of a passing car on the window of one of our cars and it drives them NUTS. They have been perched on the back of the couch watching and protecting us from our parked car for several days now. One never knows when a vehicle will have a 'Christine' fit and attack.

My youngest turned 15 on the January 5th.  Sigh.  I cannot believe he's 15!!   Just seems like yesterday he was pushing his baby toes through my uterus to the point where I could count all his toes from his forceful impression on my skin!  He came out with the greatest speed of all of my babies.  I broke water at 9:30...we got to the hospital at 10:10 p.m. and he flew out at 11:11 p.m.  It took me all of last weekend to spank him 15 times, as he's much taller than I am and strong.  Every time I'd spank him, he'd hit back.  Fun was had by all...He is officially 5' 10" now, and growing in leaps and bounds.  He got my good looks and his Dad's height.  My BFF Vickie says he looks just like me.  My son would like to argue that point...

January 17 2008 - My dear friend Diane wrote me a wonderful letter with the subject line, "...the funny thing about depression..." and it was so true.  Depression is a Catch 22 of sorts.  You know you are depressed but you can't do anything about it because you're so darned DEPRESSED.  I have been feeling much better by just saying, "Hey, I'm depressed!" and dealing with it from there.  Vickie called me last night and we talked a long time about many things and various topics.  I think we both agreed on the fact that all of us in the whole USA have/had parental units or relatives that probably needed a form of brain chemical assistance over the years...sigh.  Being human is a drawn out 'mental evolutionary process' that never stops and is sometimes very confusing.  (And Vickie - congrats on your weight loss!  You rock, soul sister!)  

Speaking of Brains...(or the lack thereof)

The other day on the way to work the Journey song called "Open Arms" came on the radio.  I love Journey music, mainly the early stuff when Steve Perry was with the group. "Open Arms" came out in the early 1980s and was not one of my favorites back them because it was such a whiny song, but over the years I have come to appreciate the vocal range of the singer so I will listen to it and even attempt to sing along to it. (Steve Perry has a vocal range from here to California and back. That man can sing.  Sandy on the other hand has a three note vocal range and it's never the same three notes so when I am singing it's like a crap shoot what might eek out of my mouth...) The verse to the song "Open Arms" goes something like (as the title implies) "...So now I come to you with open arms..." 

So there I am, a 47 year old woman attempting to sing along to this song (which in itself is hilarious had you heard me trying to sing it and I am sure people and wildlife all over this county are grateful it wasn't summer and the windows of my car were not down) and I'm trying my best to sing along to this song but failing miserably, when it gets to the verse where Steve sings in a high,parallel octave range from another dimension and universe, "So now I come to you with open arms..." and I sing the line loudly and as clearly as a bell ringing through the clean crisp morning air on a quiet Sunday morning, "SO NOW I COME TO YOU WITH BROKEN ARMS....." My eyes were already watering from attempting to hit notes outside of my three note range, but when I heard what had just come out of my mouth I burst out laughing.  "What the hell was that?" I laughed, "...BROKEN arms???!!" 

Seriously, I was so concentrated on trying to sing this song I couldn't figure out where BROKEN ARMS came from when 1). I've never had a broken arm and 2). I know perfectly well what the lyrics are! 

I am now convinced my brain, seeing me strain with the task of this had to do something to stop me from singing.  I can hear my brain now barking commands to it's cells, "Break that connection, now!  We're all gonna die if you don't!  If she keeps singing like this we're going to collapse upon ourselves and implode, ripping a hole in the time/space continuum!  I don't care how you do it - make her laugh - whatever, but break that synapse and stop her from going on with this heinous crime to humanity!"

My friend Jane also had a brain misfire the other day.  She was in the shower going through her morning routine like we all do mindlessly most mornings, and she said she had put on the shampoo and washed it out and grabbed the conditioner and proceeded to smear it all over her face and massage it in.  She missed her hair completely. Her brain apparently had to shake things up or just it just had a general brain fart.  (On the other hand, she says she's never had such soft facial skin...)

I had also been thinking about kicking people in a ninja fashion all day long on Monday.   I would envision it in my head in microsecond burst of mental vision, just having my leg shoot out and catching them in the back of their knees and dropping them.  I am in no physical condition to do this, and I well know it, but this thought of kicking like a ninja haunted me all day.  So precisely at 8:45 p.m. that night I decided I could just 'kick' and get it out of my mind.  Just kick the air...that way I wouldn't be dreaming about it all night as well.  I stood in the middle of my living room alone for approximately 10 minutes sorting out the pros and cons of using a body part in a way that it was not conditioned to be used.  Suddenly, I just kicked the air.  My right leg shot out and swung around in an arc and returned safely to it's original starting position.  I giggled.  It didn't hurt nor did I fall to the ground in pain.  I kicked 'like a ninja' for no good reason then went to bed.  I smiled to myself 'til I fell asleep...

January 22 2008 - My daughter and her boyfriend went to 'prom' last Friday, although I'm not sure you call it a 'prom' in college.  Band Banquet is more the term, I think.  They had a hoot. 

She took me along with her for a hair appointment with Terri last Thursday.  My daughter even PAID which is wonderful as I had no monies for a hair appointment.  It was nice to get out with my daughter and we blabbed the whole time about life, the universe, and everything.  (Kudos to Terri for listening to that train of thought for two hours and surviving.)  I love going to see Terri.  She wise magic for a hair.  My BFF Vickie is coming up in April, maybe I will get us a hair appointment for that week just to 'relax' and hang out...I love having my hair played with.  I go into a hair coma.   Very relaxing. 

My oldest son is going to the car show today in Detroit with one of his best friends.   This has been an annual tradition for them several year.  Hopefully they drive out of the snow band that has engulfed this morning.  They can be old codgers, but if they are your kids - you still worry.

Tomorrow is the first official collective gathering offsite with our new bosses from Japan.  I hope it's a meeting full of inspiration and happy fun super news for us as a whole. Staying employed is a good thing at this point in Michigan's economy. 

January 28 2008 - I stood with my head sticking out of the door this morning at 5 a.m. calling "Kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty" although I was doing it so fast it sounds more like "kikikikiikikikikii" and as I was calling the cats I wondered how many times in my life I've used the phrase 'kitty kitty kitty' to summon critters of the feline persuasion.  Too many times to count, I assumed to myself as I've always had cats when I could in my 47 years on earth, and if everyone in the United States uses the phrase 'Kitty Kitty' to call their cats then why do I bother naming cats in the first place?  

So as I was pondering that fact I got to looking at the stars directly above me and was in awe of the grandness of life in general when I heard a horn blasting down the road.   If it were not 5 a.m. I would have assumed it was part of a wedding party, but figured it was someone on their way to work honking at a herd of deer because in reality not many things need honking at on country roads besides deer this time of year nor at this time of the morning...but we all know once you honk at a herd of deer on a country road at five a.m., they will come back later when you are asleep and let all the air out of your tires.  Deer are born rebels and can hold a grudge forever, but I digress...   I was also thinking on the fact I had forgotten my Aunt Trudy's birthday as well as my dear friend Reva's birthday over the weekend, and talked to myself a bit about that issue.  All the while I believe I was still spewing forth in small bursts of "kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty..."

Due to the fact my ears were very cold, I pulled my head in from outside. It was 5:10 a.m. by then and the cats had already slipped in the door, eaten and pooped, and were snuggled down in on the chairs in the living room no doubt wondering why I was still hollering out the front door when they were all accounted for and present. 

The offsite meeting went well. The head of our new company was there to welcome us. They also had every major head of every major department there which to me was a good show of support.  They encourage communication!  Wow!  What a concept!  I was not disappointed after the meeting, and even had a hint of hope in the back of my mind.  

My son can't find his wallet this morning, and I don't even feel bad for him.  It is time he started taking care of his 'stuff' and knowing where his 'stuff' is.  If his stuff is missing, he should have figured that out last night so he had time to look for his stuff.  Sigh.  A parent will forever worry about their kids and their stuff...

February 08, 2008 - My Mom's Birthday would have been this weekend, and it was always said in the family that you always knew when it was Bettie's birthday because there was some kind of ice storm.  We got that a bit early this year, but still - we had ice.  Up north more they had ice and snow.  The roads have not been kind the last few days. 

Me, being the official story teller of and survivor of the "Blizzard of '78" would much rather drive in 8 ft. of snow than drive on sheets of ice.  You know where you stand with snow - you can either drive through and over it or you can't...you get stuck in it or you don't.  Ice is more like life in general, as you have limited control of the situation.

Wednesday night, if you walked outside, it sounded like a large bowl of Rice Krispies as the ice coated trees swayed in the wind.  I spent a half hour feeding ice to the dogs that night.  Taking a chunk of ice from the window well and giving it to them was like handing them a side of raw beef, I swear!  They ate it with gusto.  Apparently fresh and natural house ice is much tastier than your normal domesticated ice cube produced in a freezer. They even fought over the house ice like a pack of wild dingoes would argue over a fallen zebra.

When the roads are icy, I always warn my kids (who have cars and drive) to drive carefully.  I worry.  However, it dawns on me that telling them to drive with caution in visibly blizzard like conditions out is just plain stating the obvious.  No one is going to go out on icy roads telling themselves, "Heck, I should go 80 and drive with reckless abandon while talking on my cell phone and knitting this sweater..." However, as a Mom, those warnings eek out of me like water through a crack in a bucket.  It's not like saying these things to my kids will absolve me of any wrong doing should something happen to them..."Oh, I told her to be careful - I swear I did!"  It's more like a requirement of Mom-hood.  As a Mom you've seen them grow up and do stuff like leave for school without a back pack or clothes or underwear.  You've seen them digs holes then turn right around and step in them...so it's required by law that you warn grown children to be careful in winter weather.

My youngest son had two days this week where there was a two hour delay - one on Tuesday for fog and one on Thursday for ice on the back roads.  I must admit the fog was the worst I've seen in a while.  If you are over 40, you tend to see mostly white fluff with those eye-floaty things dancing all over your frame of vision while you try to navigate in the stuff. 

The Super Bowl was a very good game, I must say.  I enjoyed it.  It didn't even feel like your normal Super Bowl or normal football game...it was just good entertainment and it was over before you knew it as it was so watch-able.  Commercial wise, I loved the e*Trade commercials with the baby and the Bridgestone Tire commercials.  Since the whole Janet Jackson boob deployment thing, they have toned the Super Bowl entertainment down a bit and I think that includes the commercials, but you can't go wrong with talking babies and talking animals or Richard Simmons. 

Several of my kid's friends are going through some tough times right now.  One lost a dear Uncle and is grieving.  One lost a girlfriend as is depressed and sad.  I wish I could offer up words of hope to these people, but words sometimes lack any meaning when you are so sad.  I wish I could tell them I too, have gone through these type of things and survived, so if they needed to talk, I would listen and understand. I guess we all just have to take it one day at a time and hope for the best and if the roads are icy, drive with caution because, well - I said so...

February 11, 2008 - My friend Esther pointed out (after reading about the dogs and house ice above) that dingoes and zebras are on totally different continents and seeing a pack of dingoes ripping into a zebra carcass would be highly unlikely.  (Very true, unless the dingoes saved up their frequent flyer miles and flew to Africa for a snack?  OK, well...I tried.)  It would have been more appropriate to state that the dogs tear into house ice like a pack of hyenas on a fallen zebra OR the dogs tear into house ice like a pack of dingoes tear into a vegemite sandwich.  What this all boils down to is I have dogs with an ice fettish and Sandy has no clue where Carmen Sandiego is... 

This weekend we had large amounts of very cold wind small amounts of snow.  However, that "little bit of snow" created some huge drifts around the yard.  There is a three foot drift out front of the house, and a four foot drift off to the side.  I went out this morning to snap a few photos.  According to my bladder's reaction whilst outside, it's still very cold out there...

Local schools are closed, as I assumed they would be.  Getting to the side roads to clear them out yesterday would have been nigh on impossible for the road crews. 

Last I knew my poor cousin was stuck in Detroit due to the weather.  (He lives in Wisconsin and was travelling to Virginia for work.)  I hope he got to where he was going.  When I traveled for work, I always felt trapped and claustrophobic when delayed in airports, especially if they were relatively close to home and you knew you could rent a car and DRIVE home faster than waiting for your connecting flight.

February 15, 2008 - Yesterday while I was spreading love at work by passing out my Valentine cards and while I was upstairs in the mezzanine near the bank of windows facing east, I was paralyzed by the beauty of the sunrise.  Seriously, did you all see that sunrise yesterday?  I am 47 years on this earth, and never have I seen a sunrise like I saw yesterday.  I couldn't move it was so awesome.  Sigh.  All I could picture was God in heaven hanging around with His angel friends playing cards when the angels start taunting God, "Gee, God, what cool thing have You done lately?..." and then the angels continue to razz God about stuff and He finally says, "Shut up and watch this!" He snaps his fingers, and the most awesome sunrise on earth EVER happens, and the angels all say, "Whoa - cool!" and He turns to them and says, "There, take that!  Now shut up and deal the cards..."  Yep, that's what had to have happened yesterday morning.

February 21, 2008 - A picture of my youngest and one of his best friends.  This is their new official band uniform - tux for the guys and the dresses for the girls.  I think they looked smashing at the pre-festival concert on Tuesday night.  My youngest has my poofy curly hair.  He has grown it longer into an "Aarfro" as he calls it...(his name is Aaron so he named his hair style after himself.)  You can't tell in this picture, but the new bands on his braces are fluorescent green.  Oy!   Kids!  Although if I had a choice on colors on my braces and if I had ever had braces, I would go with something very bright and LOUD in color...so I don't blame the little booger.  He was my eclipse watching buddy last night.  We went out every 20 minutes or so to check up on the progress.  The moon turned a reddish brown as the shadow of earth covered it up.  I tried to take pictures, but being so cold and me being so shaky, it looked like I was filming an oncoming car on a dark desert highway whilst running down a slip 'n slide after drinking an excessive amount of coffee.  I would need a 'real' camera for that sort of shot.  As the planes flew high over head, I wondered if they could see it better than we could and if the people on the plane were all fighting to get a window seat on the moon side, pitching the plane to one side or the other and irritating the pilots. 

Work has been so busy, but I'm learning so much that the days fly by.  I think learning is a key thing in life and should never stop.  I think after I retire (hahaha-assuming I someday get to do that) I will volunteer a lot so I keep learning.  I pity people who think they have life all figured out and that they are in any way, shape, or form better than another human.  Those people are missing out on so much. 

There have been so many deer crossing our back lot that it looks like we have a deer convention center back there.  Now not only do the deer taunt the dogs, but there are a ton of rabbits all over suddenly.  Maybe they were there all along and I just noticed them?   They make odd clicking noises as they talk to each and romp about.  They found the pile of bird food near a bush out back and have taken it upon themselves to eat up the left overs.  You can also hear coyotes yapping in the distance.  Standing outside at night here while observing the stars is a rich experience.  You all will have to assume that when I am older and wander off it's because I heard something at night and went to chase it down.  (Adding that statement to assist the search parties when the time comes...)

February 25, 2008 - Another week.  I am thankful for that.  I will complain about my work load (at work) and I will complain about the stinky cat box at home and I will complain that my youngest doesn't put out much effort on his homework, but I am thankful for a whole new week in which to have things to complain about...

My daughter was in her first car accident on Friday.  She called me at work (while they were waiting for the police to come) and she was crying.  I don't blame her.  I would cry too.  "I didn't even have time to swear or anything!" she sobbed.   She was waiting to turn left and someone rear ended her.  That pushed her car into the person in front of her.  When the policeman came, he made sure that both my daughter and the jeep she hit were able to drive safely, then sent them on their way and started to make out a ticket for the girl who hit my daughter.  My husband went up to check out her car afterwards and calm her down a bit.  He took her to lunch as well.   In the afternoon, my daughter brought her car out to the house and my oldest son and Dad fixed the hood of her car which was bent up pretty good.  The back bumper has a nice chunk out of it as well.  At least everyone was OK and the damage doesn't stop the use of the car. 

Tonight is 'Girl's Night Out' with my high school buddies.  We get together one every three months or so for dinner.  We laugh a lot.  I look forward to that.  We also have a winter storm watch out for late tonight.  More snow.  Go figure - snow in Michigan?  Who would have thunk?

March 6, 2008 - I fell asleep in my Lazy Boy chair last night and never made it into an actual bed.  I woke up at four a.m. realizing my uvula felt like a cat scratching post in a cat orphanage with only one scratching post and lots of cats with pent up scratching issues.  I must have been snoring very loud and hard.  The living room was void of any critters and normally I have quite the entourage around me when I sleep, so I am pretty sure I was making enough noise that they ran upstairs in fear.   After going to the bathroom then drinking a cup of water to soothe my poor snore torn throat, I stood at the kitchen sink in a "just-woke-up-where-the-heck-am-I" daze trying to decide if I would go back to bed for an hour or so or stay up when I happened to glance down at the bottle of dish soap.  Proudly it declared on a bright orange sticker at the top of the bottle, "Eliminates UNSEEN food residue!"  

I cocked my head to the right and immediately thought to myself, "If you can't see the residue it in the first place, how do you know if this stuff works?  My dogs eliminate unseen food residue, too, if you set your plate on the floor..." By then I decided I would stay up for the day because if I had gone back to bed, I would have been in there thinking about that statement being such an obvious play to capitalize off of the human tendency toward being paranoid about such things as "unseen food" and "unseen dust mites" that eat your "unseen eye residue" that I would have never gone back to sleep.   Sigh.

Coming home last night I saw four Sandhill Cranes in the field across the road.  Already?!  The Sandhills didn't leave until late December so they must have only flown down to Indiana and hung around a McDonald's parking lot or something to be be back already.  You can also hear herds of red winged blackbirds in the woods to our west and turkeys as well.  Down the road there were two swans and a ton of geese.  If there is a pandemic of bird flu, I'm screwed.  The skunks are out and about sharing their essence as well.  There are deer everywhere.  If I stand outside with the dogs at night I can see rabbits and deer and hear all sorts of critters and birds in the woods and it's times like those that I wish I had 'Snow White' super powers to direct all that wild life into my house to clean said house as was done in the movie. 

Last weekend my husband and I spent the weekend in a hotel for our anniversary.  It was a very relaxing weekend.  The room had a jacuzzi tub and I played in it a lot.  We have very hard rusty water at the house, so a weekend with 'real' water and also highly chlorinated water made my hair very soft and my skin very soft .  The kids got us a gift card to Red Lobster so we ate there.  I love crab.  Don't get near me when I'm eating my crab legs or you'll lose a finger.  I always have a goal to crack open the crab legs and pull out the meat intact without using the tiny fork thingy...I get quite involved with the crab leg eating process and forget anyone else in the world exists. 

You know those arm rest covers on chairs and couches?  I used to hate those when I was cleaning the house as I grew up.   For years after moving out on my own, I would NEVER use those things because they were evil.  My Mom had arm chair holder thingys that you sort of screwed in through the cloth to keep them on the chairs.  Now I know why!  When we got the new Lazy Boys they came with arm chair covers, of course, and now I find it's my personal goal to keep track of those things and keep them on the chairs.  The dogs drag them off when they get up and down and so do the family members.  When I woke up this morning I had one statically charged and stuck to my butt.  They have come up missing for days then suddenly reappeared out of no where...  Arm chair covers are just plain evil and they baffle me.  However, I do have that goal to keep them in place and I am committed to it or should be committed, it could go either way, and there is on turning back.  I can see it now...we have a house fire and I scream at the kids, "Grab the photo albums and the arm chair covers and RUN...!!" 

Our new Japanese bosses sent us the company magazine, and in the back there was a "birthday number" section that tells you what your color of the month is and what type of personality you have, etc.   I don't believe in horoscope type things, but the running theme to mine over the years has been that I'm artistic, funny, and other wonderful things, but then it always ends with something like "However - YOU'RE GULLIBLE."  I never thought that to be true, to be honest, until it finally dawned on me that it is.  I am gullible.  Took me 47 years to finally admit the truth, but I have to admit it.   My brain had apparently been pondering this issue in the back of itself for some time while I went on with more important things such as breathing and living and the like.   Finally, after it had analyzed the issue to the fullest of it's capacity, my brain shoved this little gem of info forward to the front one day.  "Yep, we're damned gullible!" it announced.  Then it played all the remembered instances of being gullible for me as proof.  "Wow, I'm right!  I am gullible!"   Growing up never stops. 

March 11, 2008 - So I'm sick with bronchitis and sinus infection.  I started drugs today to cure this issue.  I threw in the towel today at work and finally called my doctor's office.  "I give up!" I declared, "I know when I have an issue, and I have an issue."  Funny how the older you get you learn to read the signs your body sends you, such as the inability to breath through your nose while your teeth pulse with pain which I know is a sure sign of a sinus infection.  Shortness of breath followed by lots of violently expelled phlegm from a coughing fit indirectly causing a bladder leak is a sure sign of bronchitis.  When I go to the doctor, I prefer to have more than one ailment to 'save' money as it were.  I want to get my money's worth.  My body tries to condense it's illnesses.  "Yeah, I lost my right foot last week in a combine accident, I can't breath from bronchitis, I lost the sight in my left eye after a bird flew into it at a high rate of speed, and I also ran out of my Allegra prescription if you would be so kind to give me another one..."

Have you ever known you were sick but kept going and going out of human nature, but when the doctor tells you that you are actually sick, you suddenly feel worse?  That happened to me after I got back to work.  I took my steroidal anti inflammatory pills with lunch as I was told to help reduce the facial swelling.  The doctor said I would feel better in several hours (face pressure wise) and she was correct, but it also meant that the floodgates opened wide to the lava like flow of snot.  Suddenly it was dripping out of my nose without permission, then flash flooding out my nose and down the back of my throat causing coughing spasms.  All in all, it was a moist afternoon.  I finally came home at four once I was unable to keep up the mucus removal on my monitor.

Tonight my son and I are watching an older show with Carl Sagan about this solar system's planets.  We were quite fascinated with the amount of satellites the world community has launched into space since the 1960s.   My first thought was, "Dang, if we had all that fuel NOW that they used on all those launches, gas would be .85 cents a gallon!" 

My son meandered upstairs I was flipping through the channels and found the NASA station, where they have a live camera feed into the Johnson Command Center for the shuttle up at the international space station.   There was no sound (I thought) and after playing with the volume button, I decided I didn't care if there was sound, I was sick, after all - so I just watched the 20 or so people in the Center fidget around and look at the tons of computer screens.  You could see them talking, but if it was to each other or to the Endeavor crew, who knew?   Like I said, I was sick and just staring at the TV to have something to stare at.   I started to wonder if they could have coffee at their work stations and how often they got potty breaks.  All of a sudden, someone "phoned home" and the volume was up so high due to my goofing around with the remote that it was a shock.   Both of the big dogs flew off the couch as if someone had kicked them and the cats went running in a panic into the bedroom.  I jumped as well, and fumbled with the remote to turn the sound DOWN.  Hahahaha.  There was periodic sound after all!   It took a whole five minutes before the critters would return to the living room.  

In the mean time I heard conversations between Houston and several people on the space station as they inspected the heat shielding with a camera mounted on an external grappling hook.  I could tell that is what they were doing, although the video feed looked as if they were pointed directly at my son's closet and this is what I heard... "Houston, we're at step 31 and getting readings of .88 which is outside the limits.."  "Copy that, Endeavor, we see that and advise you continue to 32..." "Copy that, continuing to 32..."   "We need you to set the whosawhats to calibrate with the thingamabob to 815SS .9256 to the third power and then some..."  The jargon got quite technical and I had no clue what they were talking about, most likely the reason I was watching it instead of sitting in the control center myself.  I was interested in the fact that they just said "copy that" and not "roger, over" anymore.  I would have been saying, "Copy that, Over" or "Roger That, Over" so I would have looked quite silly had I been working in the JCC that night.  I wonder if the space program had to stop using "roger" because a lot of Roger's were now astronauts?   I will have to look that up...

When there was a period of silence on the screen now, no doubt the guy who lost the straw pull that night before the shift started had to comment on what we people were watching on the cable feed.  He didn't sound like he enjoyed that, but he did it.  He also was quite technical in his descriptions and it completely lost me.  (He was probably just reading the ingredients off the side of his candy bar wrapper for all we knew...)  I finally gave up and decided it was time to go to bed.  Watching an external robotic grappling arm with a camera mounted on it looking for damage to thermal shielding isn't as exciting as I thought it would be.

March 16, 2008 - Last evening, standing outside with the dogs, I was frozen with the cacophony of bird sounds.  I mean, there were swans and the redwinged blackbirds and sandhill cranes and geese and ducks and robins and...seriously, it 'froze' me in one spot as I was trying to separate all the different calls.  It gave me a weird but good, peaceful feeling...the feeling I get when I go to the beach.  Life was put in perspective - suddenly I saw how small I was in the bigger picture of things.  Those birds would carry on just fine had I not been listening, there were so many of them calling and talking to each other.  Just as the universe would go on without earth or the moon and ...

Anyway, it was just a weird but awesome feeling.  As I stood there in a paralyzed amazed state, the dogs seemed to understand what was happening to me and flanked me on each side and sat there.  "Ah, look!   She's having a moment...we'll leave her alone to try to comprehend it all...!" Kia said to Jake.  "She's seeing things on a whole new level, 'tis true.   Hey, you gonna eat that stick?" Jake replied.

The weekend has been a combination of lazy yet productive.  I got some things done I wanted to do for a while, yet there was no rush about it and I even took a nap yesterday.  My youngest son waited until this weekend to start working on a big project that is due Monday.  I wasn't going to bail him out this time, so I let him have the computer to do his work and it was his big brother who pestered him from the background, lecturing him on "putting stuff off" and "how long did you know about this project?' and the like.  I even made my son use his own money to buy the supplies for the project that he needed, since he had known about it for 3 weeks.  "Time's up, Dude - you waited - you pay!"   I announced.  I did get to wax poetic about some of the stories my Mom told me about the depression, and he was forced to listen.  He had a very good working knowledge of that time period when I would say, "Do you know what that means?" and he did know, and explained it back to me.  I offered to take him over to see Aunt Jean and Uncle Lorin, who lived through it themselves, but he was "good" he said. 

At 3:30 a.m., I woke up this morning because of the smell of bacon.  My husband is a third shifter, so even on his days off he has odd sleep patterns, and made himself breakfast at 3 or so.  He didn't have bacon, he had Smoky Links, but they were still "hickory smoked" and what I woke up to "BACON!"  I responded to the smell like those dogs on the 'Snausages' commercials.  After I scurried down the bunk bed ladder, and after I got rid of the previous night's water intake, I started laughing at myself.  "I think you could wake me up from a dead faint if you waved bacon under my nose!"  The smoky smell of hickory is a very comforting smell, actually.  I find the smell of smoke houses or wood burning whilst driving down the road a 'homey' smell.  Must be genetic memory from my pioneer and/or primitive ancestors.  I ended up making myself a pot of coffee and staying awake for the morning.  There is a nap in my immediate future, I'm pretty sure.

March 24, 2008 - We had a foot of snow in a 24 hour period starting on Friday and going until Saturday a.m.  It came down fast and furious.  Winter's last hurrah, I hope.  This is the first time all winter that the weather reports were accurate.   I had Friday off from work so my husband took me to breakfast Friday.  We also went shopping and when we came out of the grocery store, it was coming down in a pelting sort of way.  (He went grocery shopping with me only because I said I had to get a "few things" which of course in Sandy-speak means half a truck bed full of groceries.)  As we fished tailed our way home in the slushy snow, I had called and left a voice mail for my daughter who I knew was getting ready to go to work, to warned her about the road conditions.  I was a worried Mom.

My youngest had wanted to stay after school Friday and I told him I would pick him up, but I rethought that promise with the roads being so bad, knowing I wouldn't get out in this crap even for my own kid, so I left him a message on his phone to COME HOME ON THE BUS.  I also stated that if school let out early COME HOME ON THE BUS.  Of course, he claims he had his phone off (as you are supposed to do during school) and didn't check his messages until way after the busses were gone.  I had to go get him.  I went very slow and got to the school and picked up my little bush headed cherub.  His friend Kenny came up to the car and asked if my son could spend the night.  I tell you what, I can't say no to Kenny.   Kenny has a face that would melt any Mom's heart and I'm glad I'm not his Mom.   (Of course it's easier to say no when it's your own kid, as I've learned over the years, so your own children learn early on which of their friends can get through your steel parental facade.  They employ those friends with great skill.)  So there is Kenny in my window asking if my son could spend the night ("Pleaseeeeeee?") and I finally agreed.  I am surprised I didn't open up my wallet and give Kenny all my money and the keys to my car as well.

So I agreed to haul my son to Kenny's house in the winter storm (after he came home first and did his chores and fed the dogs, etc.)  Duh.  I made my husband go with me because what wife wouldn't force her husband to partake in her bad decision?  We immediately got stuck in the drive way.   (I had the brilliant idea at that moment to test the theory that you should 'turn in to a skid' while I was in my own drive way, but the snow was so wet and sucky that it pulled me clean over almost into the trees.)  The boys had to push me out.  My husband was convinced we would be sucked off the side of the road at any second given the winter conditions and voiced this every time the snow pulled us one way or another.   We were almost to Kenny's house out in the country when my youngest mentioned that he didn't think I would actually TAKE him to Kenny's.  "I mean, come on Mom, you didn't have to!  You could have said NO!  Look at the roads!  Geez!"  

It's moments like these I'm confused as a parent.  If he didn't expect me to take him, why am I risking life and limb?  He could have told me, "Mom, you don't have to take me" but he didn't.   Really, I was quite confused.  (Although he admits later he didn't know how bad the roads were until we were sliding all over them.  A 15 year old non-driver has no clue to road conditions just by eyeing up the situation, so it seems.)  Plus, why did I agree to take him in the first place?  I knew the roads were dangerous, so why?  

We got the wee one to Kenny's house (I refused to pull in to Kenny's drive way...I dropped my son off in the middle of the road...I have been known to get stuck in Kenny's driveway on occasion...) and got home safely.  "What were you thinking?" my husband said upon our safe arrival home.  "I have no clue, my dear...no clue at all..." 

I have a vacation day today.  I had over 56 hours to use up before May 11th and I'm trying like heck to use them all up.   I have taken a Friday off here and a Monday off there up until May.  I already had a week off scheduled in April when my BFF comes up from Florida.  I worked last week to train my co-worker to be 'me' while I'm off, but we only scratched the surface.   I didn't realize there was so much of 'me' to teach a person!  This will take a while... I have amassed a great deal of knowledge that needs to be 'given' away to other people.  Sigh.

I have also noticed that if my family knows I'm on vacation at all, they tend to slack off...forget to do their normal chores.   I think it's a subliminal sort of thing - not done intentionally.  I think they all have in the back of their minds a little voice saying, "Oh, Mom is home, she'll do it..." Seriously, though, they don't do it with malice or intent.  It just happens.   I may not be able to say 'no' to Kenny, but I can tell my family to get off their butts and do their appointed duties;  I have not problem with that at all.  : )

April 1, 2008 - Auntie Em!  Auntie Em!  April is coming in like a lion!   Wind gusts today up to 50 miles per hour.  I was outside looking for Stewie the Cat and heard the old weeping willow tree emit a loud 'CRACKKKKKkkkk' so I decided Stewie was on his own and I came in the house.  That poor tree has taken a beating ever since last May when we lost the roof and had that "non" tornado that downed trees and power lines, etc.  I love that weeping willow, or what is left of her.   Sigh.  She won't fair well today with the high winds. 

We were without power for several hours last night when the winds started up a bit.  I assume a branch came down on a set of power lines.  Today will be no better since the winds are kicking butt and taking names.  Herby Curby has already migrated out to the back sheds where it's wedged and I think that's a fine spot to keep it until the winds are over.  We had just finished supper and were going to start dishes last night when the power went out.  Since we're in the 'country' and are on well water, doing dishes during a power outage is a no-no, so my son and I played with the dogs for a while.  My husband slept in his Lazy Boy, and I can't see how anyone can sleep with all the noise my son and dogs were making.  PLUS when we were not noisy, it was completely QUIET and I can't sleep in QUIET.  I have to have 'white' noise...but he did pretty good snoozing. 

After the thrill of chasing a ball and dogs around ran it's course, and due to the fact we couldn't see the ball anymore, we quit and did our own 'things'...my son watched a movie on his Zune and I cleaned.  I figured you really don't need light to clean some things such as mirrors and dusting furniture, so I used the 'force' and washed a few mirrors and folded a load of clothes that had just finished up before the power died, and dusted.  I also dusted my pretty pretty shelves and organized the pots and pans cupboard.  I was running out of things I could clean in Braille just when the power came on.  I made my youngest help me with dishes right away.  I am a bit OCD when it comes to dirty dishes and bad weather.  Apparently something deep within me feels that even if there is a tornado or bad thunder storm or I'm sure even if it was Armageddon, I'm must shuffle off this mortal coil with clean dishes. 

My son leaves next week for spring break in Texas with the High School band.  I am actually glad they are not flying over oceans and the like to get there.  They are taking motor coaches there and back.   They will be on the bus for 24+ hours, stopping only for food and poop sessions.   The itinerary looks packed full of fun, so I'm sure he'll have a hoot.  Watch out Alamo, you are being invaded again!

April 8, 2008 - The wee one is outbound for his safari in Texas.  I received a text message from him last night at 10:31 in response to my text of "how is the bus ride going so far?"   He typed back, "Fantasticle!"  I doubt he'll be saying that today around noon after being on the bus for 24 hours.  They made if very clear that the kids shouldn't poop in the bathroom on the buses.  I imagine it would be pretty stinky if 40 kids were all crappin' on the bus.  Ah, the little things in life...

Speaking of poop...I was reading at Yahoo news about people throwing their dogs doo doo in the garbage and that goes to landfills and then breaks down into methane, hence global warming and all.  I sighed.  I do that.  I pitch poop in my Herby Curby.  (Dog pooh that is, I keep mine in the toilet like a good girl!)  I am not sure what else to do with it.  I mean, we all poop and it has to go somewhere.  The article said some people have taken to flushing dog pooh down their toilet instead.  I guess I could do that as well, collect and flush the piles of glacier melting doggie dung...

I just get discouraged - all things on this planet are like little parasites causing some form of inflammation or damage to the earth.  Even if humans had not had the whole industrial revolution thing and contaminated the ozone layer with our filth from raping the earth of all her fossil fuels, the buffalo dung and animal pooh in general would have eventually lead to disaster on it's own apparently.  Damned if we do, damned if we don't....

I joined the site Weight Commander for support this weekend.   I have been eating too much and too often and I'm not losing weight.  I needed help.  I keep hoping they will get Weight Watchers back in at work, and apparently the HR person says they are working on it - but until then - I needed outside support.   My issue comes after 9 p.m. when I'm watching a TV show and mindlessly eating.   When we were members of WW, I was going to bed at 9 p.m.  Now I remember WHY.   Not only does a body need a good night's sleep, it keeps you out of the kitchen!   Staying out of the kitchen is a good thing, especially if you tend to suck up everything not nailed down while you are in there.  I still try to think of the excess fat as 'evil' - because it is.  It controls me and I let it.  Sigh.   I'm such a push over.  As my husband says, "...but food is so GOOD!"   Alas, it is, but since we both forgot to go to moderation classes, we must stop and analyze our eating habits.  A very hard thing to do. 

My sister's birthday is today!  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SISTER-O-MINE!  She is 56 years old.  Funny how as we get older the 'older' numbers are not so 'old' anymore.  Turning 56 in my mind NOW is how I felt about turning 25 back when I was 18.  Age is relative.  As long as we're still breathing and able to tie our own shoes - baby ,we got it made!

April 18, 2008 - My wee one arrived home from San Antonio in the wee hours of Monday morning.  Two motor coaches full of kids who looked like they just spent 27 hours on a bus poured out.  They were several hours late because one of the coaches blew a tire just outside of Texas. 

After my oldest and I got him home, he told us a Reader's Digest version of his trip and by 4 a.m. he was in bed.  I woke him up at 6:30 a.m. to get ready for school.  He was exhausted.  He lived through Monday but once he was home he slept from 3:00 Monday until 5:30 a.m. Tuesday.   Poor kid.  He had a hoot, however.  He rode roller coasters for the first time.  He hate heights, but he rode them and had fun.  Everyone should experience at least one roller coaster. 

He ended up taking naps after school every day of this week except today.  Today he has some friends over for a while.  I think he's fully recovered from Texas.  He's quite upset that I have yet to get his film developed.  Oh well.  As his big brother said, "Get a Job!    Then you can get your film developed when you want!" 

Today is the first day of my vacation, and I got my refrigerator freezer defrosted and the normal freezer defrosted.  I feel like I accomplished something.  Might be the only thing I do get done in a week, but hey - it's something. 

April 19, 2008 - I was thinking at 5:30 this morning that my first day of vacation was marvelous, so stress free.  I was thinking that it felt like I had been on vacation a whole week in just one day, I felt so good.  Then I logged on to work this morning to do some upgrades to our mainframe, since no one was working this weekend, and while I was doing those, read my email - and suddenly felt like crap again.  I guess I'll just have to stay clean away from anything related to work as best I can if this is to be a restorative vacation.  Sigh.

April 20, 2008 - I spent another lazy day doing absolutely nothing.  The windows are all open as it's 71 degrees out!  Almost like summer!  There was a red bellied woodpecker at my feeder this morning.  I have never seen one so close.  The reddish orange color of the head was fascinating.  I couldn't stop staring.  When I finally got my wits about me to get a camera, the little booger flew off.   My daughter spent the night last night after work and ate dinner with us then goofed with her brother.   I tried to braid her hair, but I am horrible at 'girl 'stuff so I failed miserably.   Her hair looked exactly the same this morning as it did last night before she went to bed!  hahaha.

April 21, 2008 - I actually read the paper front to back this morning!  WHOO HOO.   I have not done that forever!  I know that doesn't sound like much, but for me - it is!  I mean, a whole block of time to read a paper in the quiet.  Awesome.   It's the little things...seriously.

I also cleaned out my Herby Curby which was quite Stinky Winky.  We've had the same garbage can thingy since we've moved here, I swear.  She's old and scarred but still functions.  The company who's name is on the side has long since been bought and sold - several times, but she keeps on taking our junk, and now she is pine fresh for a day. 

I put up my hummingbird feeder this morning as well, as it's time for the males to be coming up.  I checked out hummingbird.net to be sure - and there have been sightings in Michigan already.  I also put out my bird bath and cleaned out the recycling tubs.  (Anything where I can play with the hose.)  Tonight I will be seeing good friends from High School and my BFF is up from Florida.  I can't wait.

My daughter has exams this week, and she's nervous and excited all in one.  Nervous because of the tests, yes - excited because this is the last week of her sophomore year of college!  I can't believe it.   Sigh.  We are due to do something this week as  "Mom and Daughter" type outing.  It will be fun.  She wants me to go to Noodles & Company.  She knows a Mom sometimes needs noodles. 

April 22, 2008 - What a marvelous night last night!  I had dinner with BFF Vickie and Sue and Dawn and Deb and Grace and Kathy and Mom and Dad Stolarz.  What a hoot!   A night of nothing but laughter and good friends and good food!   After we left the restaurant we talked in the parking lot forever.  Wonderful night...contented sigh.

We had a power surge yesterday, and my husband never bothered to reset his alarm clock near his bunk bed.  The doggies bunk in his bed at night until my oldest gets home as I go up to my bunk bed and of course they've yet to learn to use the ladder.  Kia was crying last night.  It was a scared crying - so I reached down to pet her head.  She was restless.  I wondered if there was a fire or something.  She cries like that when there is thunder, but it was stormless last night.  I eventually did check to see what she was upset about, and turns out it was the flashing '12:00' on the alarm clock!  Hahaha.   She was upset at that bright light doing things it shouldn't.   At least I know I'm protected from evil alarm clocks should a herd of them ever attack!

Today my daughter is taking me to lunch, and hopefully we can walk and talk for a while.  I miss my baby.

April 27, 2008 - Vacation is technically over.  I did absolutely NOTHING yesterday.   I just lounged.  Literally.  The only thing missing were cabana boys to wait on me hand and foot.  Other than that, I vegged and it was kind of nice.   However, a house full of left over junk food was not nice.  My son had friends over Friday night, so there was plenty left over begging to be eaten.  Sigh.  I will hate weighing in tomorrow.  It won't be pretty.

Lunch day with my daughter was a hoot.   We ate at Noodles and Co., and it was delicious.  Thursday night we went and got our hair cut and played with.  This was her last official week as a sophomore in college, so getting our hair 'done' was a celebration. 

Today my friend Grace is having a get together for her son George for his first Holy Communion.  I will drop by there and then swing around to get groceries, I think.  I live life on the edge.  (The get together was marvelous - I love that family.  Food - delicious as always!)

Friday night it looked as if we would get bad storms from Wisconsin.  The weather channels showed a line of thunder storms heading over the lake our way.  I got paranoid.  Next month will be the year anniversary of the storm that ripped up our roof.  So "in case" of more big storms, I went outside and took photos of my house from all sides.  I also took pictures of the 'Walk of Sheds' in case one of them blew away.  Nothing happened of course, but I had pictures in case.  Once bitten....

My kids got me a subscription to "Sky and Telescope" for Mother's Day.  A bit early, but very welcome nonetheless since I had told them that is what I wanted.  Now all I need is a telescope....maybe next Mother's Day?  (Hint Hint)

This morning I was thinking to myself, "I wonder where 5-o-clock Charlie has been..."  (That is the German short hair dog that lives at the farm house behind us.  He used to make regular visits to all of our houses in a running spastic arc at the same time every day, and normally you would see the owners in hot pursuit in their car.  Charlie has an invisible fence that is apparently REALLY invisible.)  Anyhow - I have not seen him in ages, and wondered if they finally got rid of him or he met a car head on over the winter... not that I was wishing bad things on old Charlie, mind you.   I had my son take our Herby Curby to the road since tomorrow a.m. is garbage pick up.  We always take the garbage to the road the night before.  After that I kept hearing people beeping their horns and I was thinking that people on this street were sure being neighborly.  Duh.   They were honking their horns because GUESS WHO was taking a bath in our garbage.   I happened to look out to see 5-o-clock Charlie wallowing in a bag of two he had managed to drag out of the container.  I chased him away once, picked up the garbage and watched as he ran back home.  It wasn't a half hour later and that dog was back basking in the glow that is my trash.  I had my son bring the container back up after cleaning up.  Sigh.  Never a dull moment at my house.  I blame myself as I was the one who just HAD to go and THINK of the stupid dog!

April 28, 2008 - Well, this is a fine thing.  I had a week off from work and had cramps the whole time - gearing up for a monthly that would make any woman proud, but nothing happened.  Then suddenly this morning, TA DAH!  I AM A WOMAN!   Cripes.  It couldn't have taken place last week, NO.  It had to happen the morning I go back to work!  Oy and Sigh.  My Monday Morning weigh it will be up a few pounds due to water weight, and I guess that's fine...I mean, I'll eventually pee it all out so no big whoop.

I notice some things irritate me more when I'm due for a monthly, such as when young son uses his Water Pik on his braces and blows food chunks all over the bathroom sink and mirror.  Normally I find this, well...NORMAL I guess, but on days like these, I picture holding his head in the line of a fire hose screaming, "You want a Water Pik?  I got yer Water Pik!" 

I have learned to control my outbursts as a woman, reasoning with myself that it's all due to circumstances beyond my control and all and I have gotten quite good and curtailing the roller coaster mental gymnastics that can bless us females at this time of the month.  However, there are times when even the most blessed and focused female on earth who knows well and good why she's feeling the way she's feeling still wants to wrap all the sleeping males in the house in toilet paper like mummies because they can't seem to hit the toilet when peeing. 

Sigh.  Speaking of toilet paper, NO ONE EVER CHANGES THE ROLL!  They will leave a tiny shard on the tube just to say, "There was some still on it when I used it last!"  Arghhhhhhhhhh.   It's those little things one normally takes into stride on a daily basis that seem to get blown out of proportion.  I think it will be wise tonight once I get home from work to just make dinner then go outside and pick up sticks.  Less people will get hurt that way, but I pity the sticks...

May 5, 2008 - Ah, May.  The month of green grass and pretty flowers.  I am on vacation today and tomorrow AGAIN to use up the last of my days.  I have no big plans.  I will just veg out.  I was hoping to have our Economic Stimulus money by now so I could buy some flats of flowers, but alas, we've yet to receive it.  Odd how humans criticize things and complain about things, but then when we don't get it, we bitch as well.

Over the weekend we had a visitor - a neighbor's dog named Taz.   A sweet female doggie that was very well behaved and very friendly, but she had escaped the confines of her back yard fence and had taken it upon herself to live life to it's fullest and roll in any pile of any type of stinky thing.  She was covered in, well, crap.  Every time I would go outside in the morning on Saturday, she would come up being very social and lead me to the back yard.  Finally, since I was so dense I didn't realize what she was trying to tell me, she pawed at one of our back trees and looked up.   She was quite proud.  She had treed Stewart!  I laughed out loud, as Stewart was WAY up in a tiny little "Y" shaped branch holding on for dear life with his fat belly hanging over the "Y" part.  Taz was very very proud she had treed the kitty, and Stewart was very content to stay up in that tree while Taz was down below.  I had never met Taz before, but she presented herself with confidence and acceptance of all things EXCEPT cats. 

Later in the day a very frustrated young woman came to our house looking for her dog.  I met a new neighbor!  She mentioned she had a dog that jumped the fence.  A friend had been watching Taz for them as they were out west on vacation.  (They also got married in Las Vegas while they were there!)  She said she got a phone call while they were at O'Hare airport from the friend saying that Taz was GONE.  The friend felt very badly about this.   I told her Taz had been here and treed Stewart and I had taken pictures, and I had no clue where the dog was now.  However, as soon as the lady drove away to look for Taz on the next street, here came Taz.  My husband ran inside and got a leash and we hooked her up and stuck her in my car so I could follow the poor woman and let her know we had Taz.  Just then the woman was coming back down our street and I flagged her down.   The reunion was stinky but sweet.  That was the big excitement for my weekend!   (Oh, and Stewart did eventually come down once I brought my oldest son outside to coax him.  I think he thought a big male was protection enough from a dog, and he made his way down the tree ever so slowly to my son's reach.  He wouldn't come down to me alone!) 

I usually set up my coffee at night after I make my husband's batch (as he's on third shift) so in the morning all I have to do is flip the switch and I have a pot of coffee in no time.  This morning I flipped the switch and went about my morning business and came back later to get a cup, and I had a nice pot of hot water.  I had forgotten to add the coffee.  DUH!  I started over...

May 6, 2008 - OK, this is very funny (to me) - our local TV station has weather posted, of course, like any good local TV station would, and this is what it has said about our area for the last 18 hours... notice that the current temperature in Southwest lower Michigan is 95 degrees.  HAHAHAHA.   I'm sorry, I find this very humorous.  ("Boy, and they talk about global warming, man - they were RIGHT!")  It's 46 degrees here in my little chunk of the woods this morning, and the high will be nigh on 74 degrees today. 

On Tuesday and Thursday my youngest has to go in early for jazz band.  I take him in without getting 'ready' per say - I mean, I have on my jammie pants and whatever top I was wearing and I don't even think to comb my hair, I just get in the car and take the boy in.  This morning on the way back home I was going 35 down a 25 mph street, and noticed the local police sitting at a baseball field.  I slowed down like a good girl and was not pulled over, but I did look in the rearview and saw what I looked like!  Oh My!  Had the officer had pulled me over for doing 10 miles over, he would have immediately thought a homeless person who was down on their luck had stolen a car.  My hair was sticking straight up and out in no discernable pattern.  I looked down to see my one pant leg was up to my knee on my sweat pants and the other was practically covering my over sized slipper on that side.   The old T-shirt I was wearing had a sleeve on the right and none on the left.   (I remember I had started to cut that old shirt down to be sleeveless for outside mowing, but apparently forgot what I was doing before finishing.)  It wasn't pretty.   I will have to at least comb my hair in the morning next time. 

May 7, 2008 - The inside of the house is covered in a thin layer of field dust.  They finished plowing the field across the road last night.  There is grit everywhere.  DUST BOWL type grit.  I am not complaining, however.  At least the field is being plowed for corn or what ever they happen to plant and not being built up with houses.   I dread that.  I don't want the field across the road to ever be sold and built up.  That is where all the cool wildlife lives around here, back in those woods and they entertain me in that field.  Sigh.  I'll take three days worth of dusting to suburban sprawl any day.

Yesterday was the last of my vacation days for a while.  I roll over again on May 11th and get another five weeks.  I didn't do anything exciting on vacation but I was not at work, so in a way that is exciting.  I took one heck of a nap, boy howdy.  I can't remember the last time I slept that hard.  Hence the reason, I'm sure, that I'm up at 3:30 this morning.   So far I've gotten several loads of wash done and the dogs are fed already... I dread going back to work yet I don't.  I like to work.  I like what I do.   I just don't like the politics of things sometimes and the PANIC mode that's on most of the time, but all in all I really like my job.  It is, after all, a job - and I am lucky at this point to have one!

One of the cats finally brought me a mole this morning on the stoop.  I made a fuss to all of them and petted them and said, "Good Kitties!" even though I know it wasn't Stewart who did the hunting.   He's just not a hunter.  He gallops loudly when running and thinks that is being 'stealthy'... sigh.  However, I was positive in my attitude and made a mole fuss, pointing to the dead mole and clapping and gushing over all three of their hunting prowess. 

I saw my first hummingbird of the season yesterday - FINALLY!  I was so excited I yelled, which of course scared the hummingbird away, but I saw one!  Later than normal, but then again, it's been a bit colder than normal for early spring.  I changed my sugar water to assure that they had fresh food, and I will remember not to yell in joy when I see the next one.

May 11, 2008 - It was an interesting last few days to say the least.  Work Wednesday - Friday was quite busy and overwhelming and by Friday it felt like I had worked 5 days instead of three.  Sigh.  However, Friday was fun on the 'side' in many ways.  I walked into work serenading Jane who was filling in at the front desk.   I modified "Mandy" to be "Janie" and that started the day long battle between Jane and myself of "songs that stick in your head and drive you nuts that happen to have women's names in them."  Back and forth all day we would 'give' each other songs that would of course stay in your head and run over and over and over again. 

The day was full of songs.  Jane countered with "Delilah" via our message service, and the day went on from there.  I believe we covered "Windy", "Wake up, Little Susie", "Penny Lane", "Lucille","Copacabana" and tons more.  It was funny.  Little blurbs throughout the day that kind of broke up the intensity of the 'overwhelming' part of work.  Jane won, however, because as she was leaving for the day, she came back and personally sang the opening verse of "Hello Dolly."

One of our friends and coworker who had a baby recently brought her wee one in.  Brenda brought in Ethan and he is a cutie.   He has a full head of brown hair and looked so angelic.  I love to see babies, then think to myself afterwards that I am SO GLAD I'm past that part in my life!   Children are a blessing, even more so when they can talk, walk, and support themselves.

Later still Jane's daughter Jess brought in the doggie she rescued - Buddy.  He is a mix of Jack Russell with ... well, we're not sure, but he is a doll.  He really liked  my coworker Doug, and went right to him.  He was scared of the rest of us, however.  (I assume when you are a dog that was probably abused then rescued, you would be a bit leery of humans...at least I would be.)  Buddy would sit, but not really 'sit' as his butt hovered above the floor.  Jess said that is just how he sits.  I was just impress with Buddy's incredible sense of buttocks control and balance.  

Oh, before I forget, my husband called me on Thursday morning.  "Guess what?" he asked in a child like I've done something I'm sure you will hold over my head for years to come kind of voice.   "What?" I asked.  (I was so busy at work and being the ever supporting wife, I had little interest in his call unless he had hit something head on or lost a body part...)  "Well, I took a vacation day for tonight..." he said in a slow drawl (and I am thinking to myself "So?  You have to call me because you are taking a night off?") then continued to say, "...and I bought a motorcycle!" 

After a long pause, I said, "Oh really?" in my best 'you bought an expensive item without consulting me first you rat bastard - can you tell by the tone of my voice I am a bit irked ' voice.  He had bought a Yamaha Stratoliner (or is it a Stratocaster?)  All the guys at his place of work are getting bikes due to high gas prices, and we had talked about my husband getting a bike as well, but I didn't think he'd do it without discussing it, price wise.   My husband has had several motorcycles over the years.  I am not worried he'll get killed.  (After all, he's highly insured and he's a good cyclist.)  I was just stunned he would just 'go and do it' without prior firm discussion.  I told him I was very busy and suggested we talk about the 'new member' of the family after I got home.

Later that day the phone rings again.   I couldn't answer it, so there was a message waiting for me.  Then my cell phone rang.  I didn't answer it, and there was a message beeping in my purse.   Finally I listened to the messages.  My husband was stranded (on his NEW bike) about five miles away.  His new bike just quit working;  it wasn't getting gas.   I laughed out loud when I heard his message.  After calling him back, I told him to call the place he just bought it from and ream them a new one and get them out there.  He wanted me to pull him home with a rope, but I said NO!  "You call them and tell them their NEW motorcycle isn't running and you want them to come get you and you and ..." (Needless to say I went on a bit in a huff.)  Finally he agreed, found the business card from the salesman, and called him.  He called me back to tell me they were coming to pick him and the bike up. 

After continuing to work for a bit, and assuming that he was safe and 'he got himself into this, he can get himself out of it and all'  I decided to go sit with him.  How heartless was I to let my husband sit alone on the side of the road with his non-working new bike?  I got in my car and headed over to where he was.  He seemed happy to see me.  He plopped in the front seat and sighed.  I laughed.  He laughed.  Then he just sighed a lot.

It is a HUGE bike, mind you.  I was thinking it would kill a small child if it fell on them, it's that big.  While we waited, I asked my hubby if he locked the doors at home, and he said, "Well, Yes!   I'm not stupid" so I called my youngest son's cell phone (who was due to get off the bus and has not been carrying a house key lately.)  He answered his cell, and I asked him where he was, and he said, "Home, duh!"  "Are you in the house?" I queried.  "Yeah, why?"  "You don't have a house key, wasn't the door locked?"  "Yeah, the front door was locked, but the back door was wide open..."  I gave the wee one a lecture about carrying a house key from now on then gave my hubby a lecture about locking the back door.  At least the young one was home safe.  He asked where I was.  "Sitting here with your Dad, waiting for someone to come get his new motorcycle that he bought that doesn't work."  I had son on speaker phone.  Young son laughed and hubby rolled his eyes.

I called work to let them know where I was.  After telling Doug where I was and why I was there, he laughed, too.  Hubby said, "I'm glad I can bring such joy to everyone!"  I explained to him it was just plain funny.  "You buy a new bike and you are all hyped up and immediately it doesn't run.  It's like a Catch 22 kind of funny.   People are going to laugh." 

After 20 minutes, and after the humor of it all had drained from my husband completely,  I made him call the bike dealership back to find out where their pick up was.  Apparently they sent out their delivery boy with the truck/trailer from Paw Paw (which is where he got the bike, at Paw Paw Motorcycles, which is a good 1/2 away to begin with) and he got lost.  We waited another 1/2 or so before the kid showed up.  The delivery guy was smaller than my youngest son, and there was no way he could wrangle a bike into a trailer.  My husband pushed it up the ramp for him.

The kid said he'd never driven a truck w/a trailer and a bike on the highway before, and asked how to get back to Paw Paw without taking a major highway.  My husband gave him directions, then looked across the road at me and mouthed, "Will you please take me home?"  I nodded my head and but I laughed even more.

I took the poor guy home, and then I went back to work.  (He had told me on the way home how much the bike cost, and that is when I stopped laughing.  Oy.)  I told everyone that "I got a new motorcycle for Mother's Day!" in a joking kind of way, but I was still a bit miffed over the whole deal.  Sigh.

However, my gift from hubby for mother's day was truly not the motorcycle - it was my own personal telescope!  I was quite thrilled and now it's my turn to laugh and be laughed at, as it's done nothing but rain and be cloudy.  This is my 'Catch 22' thing.  They predict icky weather for a few days.  I won't be able to sight it in until next weekend.  It's computerized and can slew to the star or location I want on it's own, but it has to know where it is first, and currently it will just sit in my living room until I can introduce it to my personal sky.  (I did take it outside after I assembled it yesterday and looked at the trees across the field from us.  I could see the turkeys on the ground doing turkey things and birds in the trees like they were right in front of me!  There was a crow picking meat off of a deer skeleton and I could even see the ribs on that dead deer!!  I looked at the horses in the field out back and saw what brand of trailer was sitting back in the field.  I viewed signs down the road and I could read them clear as a bell - well, besides them being backwards, but still!!  It will be so cool once I can see the Moon up close and personal and the stars and the like!  I really can't wait.)

For Mother's Day, my daughter got me a ton of cool flowers to plant!  I will do this as soon as it stops raining.  It had better stop raining ... I just looked at the weather and it's supposed to be cloudy and rainy all week and next weekend as well.   Arghhhhhh.  I should quit complaining and be thankful that we didn't get those horrible storms they did down south, huh?

My oldest son took us all out to the dinner as well.  It was a wonderful Mother's Day all in all.  I got flowers, a telescope, dinner (and a motorcycle!)  I am a lucky woman and blessed a million times over.  They like me - they really like me!!

May 13, 2008 - I forgot to mention the fact that the only issue with hubby's humongous motorcycle that day was due to the reserve tank not being turned on...I guess they can turn off the flow between the main tank and the reserve tank.  His bike was returned the next day.  Did you know that thing weighs 782 pounds?  782 POUNDS!???  Sigh and Oy.

I took my scope out last night (still light out) and looked at the moon.  How awesome.  Sigh.  Craters - the thing if full of craters!  It was a wondrous site.  It is still very cold at night, so I didn't take her out after dark to align the computer part of it.  Just seeing the moon (and the horses pooping a mile away) was enough for me for now.  I could even focus in on a bunch of dragon flies that were over in that field!  Holy Crap! 

I also got some of my flowers planted last night as well.  I am thinking it won't frost this week - being the positive person that I am - so I took a chance.  (I bet I could walk a mile away with my telescope and see my flowers as if I was really HERE. ) 

May 14, 2008 - I believe STEWART THE CAT actually IS THE ONE bringing me dead moles!  JOY.  I watched him last night under the bird feeder (where the moles will tunnel to eat seeds) and he was vibrating in a seizure type way, almost like Michael Flatley in 'Lord of the Dance' - he was so excited over the ground moving around him.   You could see where the mole was tunneling.  (Even I was vibrating as I wanted to go out there and kill the thing, but I waited and watched Stewie.)  Stewart watched and watched and vibrated more and then he would pounce and dig and struggle with something (I am assuming it was the mole) and then lose it and then settle down until the mole moved more dirt around him, then the whole dance would start again.  This morning on my stoop was another mole as a present.  Sigh.  My little Stewart is growing up.  *Sunrise...Sunset....swiftly flow the years....*

May 21, 2008 - Tonight I decided to finish planting the flowers my daughter gave me for Mother's Day.  I headed out back to tear up some dirt in a spot behind one of the many sheds we have, and hit something hard.  I dug around it and thought I had found a buried broom handle, so I kept digging.  Took me a bit to realize I had hit a root!   We have a willow tree out back, and I've heard they will send roots out quite a distance...but never actually SAW a root 50 feet away from the parent tree!  I started hacking at it and got the length of it out I wanted out and continued digging, but then I found a root as big as someone's arm in thickness.  This one couldn't be hacked out with my little digging tools, so I went for the only ax I knew we had.  (A little one my son had used after last year's storm that was back by the wood pile ... about the only thing it's really good for is stubbing your toe on...not very sharp at all!)

So I'm hacking away thinking, "Cripes, this is gonna take all night!"  Apparently, however, that root went farther than I thought as I soon heard someone letting the dogs out and they came out barking.  Then I heard my husband come out muttering to himself.  (Remember, he's on third shift and should have been sleeping...)  He went to one of our other sheds and came out with a BIG AX and walked up and hacked my root away in no time.   "Next time use the real ax!" he told me, and went back in the house to go back to bed.  As I was walloping on that root, it was vibrating all the way into the bedroom under his bed and woke him up!  Hahaha.   It made me laugh.  (And it's good to know we have a REAL ax!)

The last few days at work have been CRAZY with over load.  By five-o-clock my eyes are shot and I can't see worth crap and my brain is fried.  I tend to play with my hair towards the afternoon if I'm stressed, and I'll eventually put it up in a bun and secure it with a pen or pencil that's handy.   Last Thursday I was doing this as I was trying to work through a new problem and later went to write something down, and my pencil was gone.  "Odd, I just got a new one out!"  After a while more of working I couldn't find THAT pencil.   "Cripes, where are my pencils..."  On the way home I found three of them crammed into the bun in my head!  Oy.  At least I remembered where I parked. 

I think I've officially reached the rank of "perimenopausal" if there is such a word.  Lately my 'cycles' have been non-stop and my mood has been either 'down' but not in a suicidal or weepy way or I'm 'up' so high I'm chatting with geese and poopin' on picnickers.  My beard is also coming in especially lush and BLACK, and over all I have a total 'Maxine' attitude about life.   As I was getting ready for work the other morning, I realized I've reached the age where one can spackle in the bags under one's eyes only so much with makeup and the wrinkles and puff and excess hair are just THERE and that is ME now and I have to just accept it.  Sigh.  A line from one of Billy Joel's songs says, "It's either sadness or euphoria..." and now I know after all these years he was talking about pre-menopausal women. 

Aaron with Grandma after his concert

Last night was my son's spring concert.   My Mother in Law, my daughter and her boyfriend, and friend/'fake' son David were there with me.  There were the two High School jazz bands that played and the concert band and the symphonic band.  Then 'Legends' played - a brass and drum type ensemble from Portage.  Local kids play in it as well, so they come out and showcase themselves at other High Schools.  (My daughter played in 'Legends' when she was in High School and she LOVED it and I LOVED it!)  This group has SOUND that blows you back a few rows.  Happy Sigh.  They did "Jesus Christ Superstar" and I was so thrilled I was hollering.  We didn't get out of the High School until 10:15 p.m., but it was well worth the numb buttocks to hear all that wonderful music!  I am so happy my kids don't run screaming from me from embarrassment when we are at concerts, as I will hoot and shout after excellent selections or cry uncontrollably because I get so worked up over band music.  Music moves me.  We bought raffle tickets and won a handmade blanket,too!  Most wonderful evening it was.

When I got home and got the wee one off to bed, I headed outside to view some stars.  Last night was the first night it wasn't totally cloudy since I got my telescope.  I thought to myself, "Ah, tonight is the night I will be able to set up the old girl!"  I hauled her outside and set her on a level surface.  I turned on the hand held computerized type device thingy and started the process of entering in my location, date and time, and I chose to align it with three stars.  I got one star done, and used the hand held controls to move it to another one.  I sighted that in and entered.  I then 'slewed' it to the next brightest star I could see and I heard the motor come to a slow and grinding halt.   "Bwahmmmmmm...sputter."  I let out a loud 'UG' as I realized my batteries were already dead.  Apparently 'slewing' takes a lot of juice and I had slewed a lot just looking at horses poopin' in the field out back and the deer prancing in the woods across the road.  I also spent a lot of time the other day watching a herd of male turkeys in the woods  - sort of an avian gang - as they were all running around and puffing up and acting all 'manly' like...but I digress. 

May 25, 2008 - Last night we saw the International Space Station go overhead twice!   Woot.  I know it just looks like a moving 'star' but just knowing it was the ISS was cool enough.  (I make the family watch enough of the NASA channel where they know what is going on in that space station so seeing it fly over was exciting.)  I couldn't get my scope fine tuned on it as I'm new at the whole telescope thing and it's a small scope.  I tried, mind you.  The first pass lasted like 5 minutes so I had time - I'm just not good at doing anything with a telescope yet except looking at animals crap a mile away.  Smile.  The ISS makes orbit around the ENTIRE EARTH in just 1.5 hours or so.  Unreal.  It's travelling at 17,000+ mikes an hour.  As I'm watching it speed past up above, I think of all the fuel we've used up on all the various space flights over the years, and I wonder how much it must be costing NASA now with gas prices the way they are.  When we run out of fossil fuel, I won't mind riding a horse to work so much as I will miss the space flights. 

Friday night my husband took my youngest son and I out to dinner, and I ate and ate.  I got three huge blueberry pancakes and I tried like heck to shove them all in with my eggs and toast.  After waddling out to the car and driving home, I decided I couldn't let such a huge meal sit there all night while I passed out in my chair, so I mowed.  I did the push mowing/trim work first, then before it got dark I got the front half of the lawn done.  I was so thrilled.   My husband mowed the back half yesterday while I cleaned the house.  I washed all the bedding and swept and mopped and scrubbed and sucked things up and threw stuff out.  I was done by the late afternoon.  I am constantly amazed how dirty we are.  We're pigs.  Even the fish had algae growing on the side of their tank!   Oy.  I scrubbed their 'house' out too. 

My youngest has a friend coming over tonight for our bon fire, and he decided he should clean his room.  Now mind you, I ask him to clean his room all the time but that usually just involves him bringing down a sock or two along with the vast array of pop cans he's been storing up there.  (I'm convinced he's doing experiments to see if sugar free cola will turn into the next alternative fuel source by letting them age in his room until it's congealed into a nice mass of goo.) 

There was a lot of noise up in his bedroom for a while, then he came down with a big garbage bag full of 'stuff he no longer needs' as he called it.  He took that outside, then got more garbage bags and cleaners and headed back up.  (He wanted me to call him when the ISS flew over, but I was so intent on trying to get my telescope ready I forgot - and he was deep in to cleaning his sty.  He got to see the second pass, however.)  There was more noise upstairs and he had his music up quite loud, but you could tell things were happening.  I yelled upstairs to warn him at 11:45 that the ISS was coming again, and at the top of the stairs I could see a pile of things from his room piled high. 

He ended up emptying the vacuum three times.  I cannot believe it was so filthy up there!  (When the kids reach the age of 13, they are on their own to clean their own rooms.  I did it for the first 13 years - and I think 13 is the perfect age for them to take that chore over.)  He moved everything out and did along the walls and did all the corners and threw away stuff that apparently he's just been shoving under his bed for the last few years when I tell him to clean.  Hahahhha.  He filled up Herby Curby and started putting bags of junk in the 'tent' (not a shed in our famous 'walk of sheds; but a wannabe shed that covers my husband's 1989 Camero that doesn't run and just sits there getting cat tracks on it, but I digress...)

I went through a bag or two to see what he was throwing away, exactly, and had to laugh.  There was boxes for items he got several years ago.  There were notes from Jr. High.  I had always thought his bed sat high up for a bed, but now I know it was just elevated by years of shoving stuff under it.  I can't wait to go up today to see what he did and how it looks.  The mere fact he had to empty the vacuum canister three times still has me amazed.   Obviously the boy is not allergic to dust or he would have been dead by now.

Tonight we have a bon fire, weather and wind permitting, plus we are going to BBQ as well.  I made potato salad last night, so that's done, and my oldest bought chips and pop.  We got the meat and buns and veggie tray.  I look forward to just being mosquito bait later today.  Very relaxing.   (My youngest son asked a few weeks ago, "Is it BOMB fire or BON fire?"  I laughed and told him it was 'bon' fire.  "Oh, OK.   Haven't you ever noticed, Mom, I have never called it the same twice in a row all my life because I never knew what it was really called?") 

Bomb Voyage to you all...

May 28, 2008 - Happy Almost Birthday to my BFF Vickie.  May this year bring you joy and happiness at every turn.  May you enjoy sunsets and sunrises with gusto.   May you laugh at children at the grocery store.  May you smell the smells of the woods and trees and flowers and sigh with contentment.  I love you! 

My Aunt Trudy sent me some pictures and here is a good one from our reunion on Mother's Day weekend.   My Cousin Wayne was up to visit, and we had a gathering at my Uncle Merton's house.   Starting at the left and going around the table:  Aunt Trudy, Me, Cousin Carl, Sister Joyce, Niece Tori, Cousin Wayne, and Cousin Dan.  It was a hoot to see everyone. 

The bon fire and BBQ went well on Sunday night.  It was good having the family herded together.  The mosquitoes were HORRIBLE until the fire really kicked in.  (Fire was the original bug zapper, as I'm sure you are all aware.)  We played badminton and the food was good and the night was full of stars.  The kids got to see the ISS fly over, if only for a a minute or two.   We laughed loud and hardy as well.  Laughter is good for the soul. 

*I want it noted here that Sandy is the Bird Queen.  If you could please direct all correspondence to 'Sandy the Bird Queen' that would be appreciated.. You may ask yourself exactly why is Sandy is the Bird Queen?  Read on..*.

Monday it was warm and I had all the windows open.  I was sitting on the couch sniffing the warm breeze like a doggie out a car window.  There were wonderful smells of flowers and grass and earth.   Really, it was the first warm whiff of smells since spring and all the scents were just marvelous.  Then, I heard geese...  Here came two families of geese out off to the right.  Where did they come from?  I don't have geese in my yard EVER, and here were two families with at least 10 goslings that I could count.  I watched them make their way up through the yard and out to the road.  I grabbed my camera but taking a picture through a screen window just doesn't work so well and I don't recommend it.  The first family crossed over to the corn field.  (Aided by some kind motorist who didn't slow down and assumed beeping his horn would help the geese walk faster.)  The second group was a bit more hesitant but finally crossed.  I laughed to myself for a while, but still wonder where they came from.  The nearest swamp in the direction from whence they came is a long way back there. 

I was also able to see the Sandhill cranes across the road with binoculars as they were out with their chicks.  They have TWO babies this year.  (They are 'my pair' - the ones that bring their teen aged kids to the bird feeder and they come back every year.)

Monday late afternoon  I was outside trying to get some sun on my shiny albino legs when a barn swallow flew by me.  I thought to myself, "Oh, how nice.  A barn swallow is saying hello!"  I like swallows as they consume mass quantities of mosquitoes and bugs.  Then the swallow came back and said hello a heck of a lot closer.  Then two barn swallows were hello-ing the heck out of me.  It dawned on me as one grazed past my cheek that I had to be too close to their nest or their wallet or something...

I moved and they still swooped near my head.  I ran in the house and they were swooping towards the door.  Once they calmed down, I could see why they were upset.  They have a nest in the tarp/tent thingy that my husband uses for his Camero cover and I was sitting right under it.  I watched them swoop and dive and go after bugs then return to the nest.  I went and got my daughter so she could see.  We went out and watched them, hiding behind my husband's car, but they found us and showed us their flying expertise.  "See how close I can get to you without actually touching you?"  We laughed and ran back into the house. 

Later that night I had all three kids outside watching them.  With so many of us out there, they didn't dive and swoop at us but they made it known they were watching us and also made it clear they were not happy with an audience.  When Kia the dog got out of the door before I could stop her, they went after her.  Hahaha. 

Tuesday morning as I was outside waiting for the dogs to do their business as any good Mom would, with poop picker-upper in hand, when I head DUCKS.  By now, after a weekend of odd bird invasions, I could only laugh out loud.  "OK, now it's time to queue the ducks!" I proclaimed to the dogs.  I went out of the dog pen and walked out to the back yard.  There were four ducks out back.  They were very vocal yet seemed perfectly content to be back there.  "Quack!" they said to me.  "Well, Quack to you as well, my avian friends!" I replied and went back to scooping poop.  About then I was picturing what kind of sign to hang out front for my little bird sanctuary here...

So yesterday I was discussing all of this with my coworker Mike, explaining the plethora of birds that had visited me all weekend.   (Mike is forced on a weekly basis to listen to my animal exploits at length.   Kudos to Mikey for not bringing down duct tape when he talks with me.)  He asked if it was time to put up the humming bird feeders.  "Heck yeah - they've been back for a month!" I stated, being the expert of all things with feathers that I'm not.  I told him about my humming birds and how the males came back first but now I have a female visiting the feeder, when out of the blue came a female humming bird buzzing right near us.  I smacked Mike and said, "Mike, Look!  A humming bird!"  We watched her check out a pine tree directly in front of us.  She hovered there for a minute then shot off to the South.  We both burst out laughing.   Apparently all I have to do now is just THINK of a bird and they show up.   "I think I'm buying a lottery ticket tonight..." Mike said, "Can you concentrate on a pot of gold or something?  Let me know when it shows up..."

June 2, 2008 - I spent the weekend dodging killer barn swallows.  I know they won't actually hit me and put my eye out, but frankly, I don't want to to test that fact...they swoop with gusto and come very close to contact - I suppose they wouldn't swoop and try to impale themselves into my forehead if I wasn't out there playing junior paparazzi trying to get pictures of their nest.   Their mud nest is coming along well.  They followed me as I mowed out back, sucking up the bugs I shot out of the mower.  The dragon flies followed me too.  I had quite the mower parade. 

I also got a poor picture of a wood pecker at the suet feeder - taken through the screen, so it's fuzzy, but as the designated paparazzi of the immediate wild avian kingdom, I have to at least try. The woodpecker can take me to court if he needs to...

It was a good weekend all in all - weather wise and life wise.  We went to a 60th Birthday party for my sister in law Sue, and that was fun.  My husband and youngest son put in river rock around the base of the house/siding as I mowed the yard.  My daughter came over last night and spent the night.  She did her laundry and we had a BBQ and then went out for ice cream.  We laughed so hard in the car on the way home from ice cream ... let's just say I was thankful for Poise Pads!  I have a neat family.

June 8, 2008 - Ah, a quiet Sunday morning.  I miss 'being alone' and having quiet.   I am never alone ...  never ever alone.  There is someone on every possible working shift in this house, and getting a moment where I'm the only one awake and coherent is RARE.  I savor these moments like a nice warm slice of apple pie with ice cream.  (How come I have to compare everything good in my life to food?)

Many storms last night from what I could gather from the news this a.m.  I worry about my cousin in Wisconsin, my friend Dan up North, and my friends Diane and Terri near Indianapolis.  Lots of flooding happening.  Mind you, we need the rain, but not all in one fell swoop.   Right where I am there was rain and thunder and lightening, but nothing severe.   Some trees down around the area on Friday night - but still, nothing like what they got up North of us and South of us. 

This is the last week of school for my youngest.  He will be out and free by Friday.  He then starts DRIVER'S EDUCATION next Monday.  I am so not ready for this.  Out of all the kids, he will be the one that rips my hernia out and chokes it from the stress and worry of the process.  You know, they say you "don't remember the pain of childbirth" but that's a lie.  If you happen to forget the pain of childbirth, it's all recreated for you during the driver's education process and you say to yourself, "Oh, Yeah - I remember now..."

My youngest and I have been going round-n-round over some issues as of late.  I adore the little booger, but he pushes my buttons.  He knows he pushes my buttons, hence he pushes harder.  He likes to get a reaction out of me.  ME only from what I can tell.  He doesn't push Dad's buttons at all.  He doesn't test that ground because he knows that ground is rock solid and pissy.  Mom, on the other hand, is a bucket of fun apparently - watching my reactions to daily life issues.  Every time I tell him to do something his reply is, "I know, Mom!"  He couldn't possibly know all the wisdom I am bestowing upon him, but he claims he does, and that irks me even more.

He announced to me he was failing Environmental Science. "What?!" was my reaction to this statement, my head cocked to one side and my eye twitching.  He explained why (bad test score, missing work.)  He has issues with the teacher.  He blamed the teacher for his failing grade.  "No!  Not acceptable!" I retorted.   "I know, Mom!"  (When Mom issues the statement "NOT ACCEPTABLE" the older two kids will tell you it's either time to run for your life, or get on your knees and start pleading for mercy.)  I suggested firmly (which is the kind way to put it - I'm sure I didn't say it like that - I'm sure I was more animated in my suggestion) that he had better beg for extra credit or ask what he could do to improve his grade. 

He managed to bring home a progress report with a D+ in that class.  Once again, my head spun around and pea soup shot out of my mouth as I roared, "NOT ACCEPTABLE!"  If my youngest son struggled and had issues with getting passing grades to begin with, I would be more understanding.  My youngest son has carried As and Bs throughout his school career without even studying at night or cracking a book to study.  So far in his little life he's cruised by on his good looks and the original intelligence God gave him.   He has not had to work on a grade.  Good grades, up until this point, have just fallen from the sky like manna. 

I suggested we sort through his binders and folders in his back pack.  "I think you need to be more organized." (That was my reason I gave him - I just wanted a chance to talk to him about school.)  As we sorted through things, I found paper after paper that was incomplete or not even started.  "Why don't you do this stuff?" I asked in the calmest voice I could muster.  "Because I don't care about that stuff..." was his reply.  No fear in his voice at all.  Not a care.  I was of course turning various shades of red and foaming at the mouth.  He had the nerve to laugh at me, as I'm sure my emotions were clear on my face - and that's when I snapped.  "OK.  Since you obviously don't care if you get good grades enough to get into college, you might as well get used to manual labor, I suppose.   Oh, and give me your Zune."  *A Zune is like an MP3 player that can house music, movies, etc.  He uses his Zune to listen to when bored, or doing dishes, and he falls asleep with his Zune.*  He laughed again as he handed over his Zune, shaking his head  He claimed he didn't care he lost his Zune.  Oh well....

I hauled him outside and I made him tote branches back to the burn pile as I trimmed bushes and trees. We were both sweating a lot by the time my rage was exhausted on the poor innocent foliage.  I played a bit of a mind game on him while he was sweating profusely as well.  "You know, this IS tick season, so keep an eye out for ticks..."  After that he was brushing himself off and swatting at himself and running his fingers through his hair.  He hates ticks.  I smiled to myself at my evil deed of mental manipulation.

When I had pretty much c