My boy wrote this poem for me at school today:
Mom
She lets me play PS2!
She helps me find my lost shoe.
She also is very funny.
She's as soft as a bunny.
She lets me pour my own milk!
Her skin is as soft as silk!
AWWWWWW! Thank you, Daniel.
Hope you are enjoying your leap year!
My parents will have been married 34 glorious years tomorrow.
My son believes the book fair is run by the book fairy!
My daughter pronounces "elevator" as "alligator".
The aforementioned daughter has a double ear infection, yippee, and double yippee that the pharmacy drive through has no pharmacist on duty.
The oldest boy is off to a weekend of 4h craziness at Jackson's Mill.
The aforementioned oldest boy scored an overall 23 on his first try at the ACT, with an impressive (at least to me) 29 in English.
Lost makes me confused.
Is there a muscle that runs from the shoulder through the back and into the hip? If so, I think I have sprained it!
My very good friend in Charleston is going to have a hip replacement. She lives in a third floor walkup. Perhaps you can think of her when you pray or offer up good thoughts to the universe.
My other good friends in Charleston have learned that his blood pressure may stem from a GI source as opposed to a cardio source. Apparently this is much better news. YAY!
I have finished fooling with the blog layout. I hope it is easier to read than the peace background. Can you dig it?
I have been playing around with my layout and this may be the one I stay with. The peace signs background was just too hard to read on. Let me know what you think.
Aurelia is in the grips of the post flu crud.
I accidentally washed and dried my cell phone. It's dead.
There was no school today.
But AI comes on tonight and I have cookies so the whole world is OK by me! :0)
I have been trying to sprinkle in some joyful books that are laden with humor and good stuff in between the books of child abuse stories and information that I read as often as I can stand. One of the tricks I have tried (because I have a limited list of favored authors) is to type the name of the books I loved into the Amazon search engine and then follow that to the books other people who have read that book have bought. I have stumbled upon some real stinkers, but a gem has shone through. I read her first two books in big, slobbery bites and am waiting hungrily for the third to be released in March of this year ( maybe on my birthday? Please?). Her name is Joshilyn Jackson and her books (gods in Alabama and Between, Georgia) were just wonderful. If you are in a lull and feel like taking book recommendations from a very happy hippo, try her out.
Ok, no offense to my current best friends, but my bestest friend from way back in elementary school is coming back to WV for a visit. She moved away to TX at the end of our ninth grade year. She came back for a visit the following summer ( I was pregnant and embarassed), she flew in for my wedding in '99 (I was distracted), and I flew out to TX in '02. So this is very exciting. Even though we both have busy lives (I cater to children, she has a grown up job with computers) and barely ever talk, I have still felt connected to her. These are the things I think of when I think of her (or things that make me think of her):
Pringles, ice cream sandwiches, fold out sofa beds, Moonlighting, Jerry's Dairy, bicycles, treehouses, shaken soda cans, pianos, tap dancers, singing out loud in the Shoney's parking lot in her mom's station wagon to Paula Abdul's Straight Up while Paula Abdul was still popular, anything by Cyndi Lauper, Jefferson Airplane (especially "We Belong to the City"), and Tracy Chapman, Hoosiers the movie, John Cusack, Tetris, her dance recital, turquoise, our trip to Kings Island, french braided pigtails, a book called the Egypt Game (but I don't know why), staying after school with her and her mom and realizing teachers were not just teachers but real people with lives outside of school, walks in the woods, and so much more.
There are so many times she crosses my mind, sometimes for a split second, sometimes longer, that it seems like she isn't gone. I don't know very much about her grown up life. But she will always be my friend.
Did I mention she's coming today?!?!?!?!?! YIPPPPEEEEEE!!!!
Monday evening I was thinking about sickness. Ted had been sick all day and my stomach was in knots (probably from stress or being tired). I was thinking how there was nothing worse than throwing up. That it was probably the grossest thing ever. Well, I was W-R-O-N-G! See, the grossest thing is being responsible for your poor, sick child who just happened to eat the same thing you did and threw up in his bed. He came to report his malady shortly before midnight. I jumped out of bed and put him in the tub so I could start stripping his sheets. Lucky for me he had (past tense) an egg crate foam pad on his mattress. I just rolled it all up and took it to the basement. While I was trying to get him cleaned up, settled into a clean bed, and not puke myself, I was also looking for a bucket. in case it happened again. I ran up and down our stairs looking in every nook and cranny until I finally spotted one outside. With that in hand I tucked him into his mismatched sheets, under the oversized blanket, and went back to bed. Since he stayed home from school and I had other kids at the house the next day he trotted off to his room in a self-imposed quarantine. When the kids went down for a nap, I went to check on him and offer him lunch. He was lying in bed looking tenderly at his birdhouse (with all of its fascinating doors and hinged roof). He asked for Hot Pockets. UGH.
Our daughter has had a squooshy tush all weekend and got up twice this morning to squoosh. Lying in bed, knowing I would need to attend to the wipage, I thought to myself, "Boy, it sure is raining hard." Then I went to the bathroom to tend pooty pot and discovered that the "rain" was actually a waterfall cascading along the wall from the bathroom ceiling.
The source? Well, our house if several stories high and our oldest son has the entire third floor to himself. Apparently, he had a plumbing issue in the middle of the night, thought he had stopped the waterflow, and went back to bed. His bathroom is over my bathroom and my bathroom is over the kitchen. I thought the kitchen was safe until I saw the water pooling into the flourescent light fixture above my head.
Luckily, we stopped the water flow. We have lots of bleach on hand. We know how to clean and fix. But may I take this chance to simply say "Yuck, ew, nasty, and oh man!"
A trip to Wally world and we now have industrial plungers at all four toilets!
There were plenty of other pictures that would obviously make a seven year old laugh, but this one made him laugh so hard I had to post it.
Apparently, on the sidebar.
I didn't plan to have three posts this evening. But my son spent his entire bathtime this evening reciting word for word a Bowflex commercial.
"Hey Mom. Did you know there is this thing on t.v. that has four things that will let you totally resculpt and define your body?"
"All it takes is just twenty minutes a day to see immediate results."
"You should buy it Mom. It's just fourteen dollars a month!"
I wish there was a parental control for commercial brainwashing. Daniel is particularly susceptible to this sort of ploy. So I explained it to him like this:
"I hate to break it to you, bud, but that is a clever marketing ploy. Brace yourself, but not everything you see on t.v. is true. The people who sell that stuff want it to be as attractive as possible to people so they will spend their money on it."
Daniel's response: "So they can get rich.... (throws hands up in the air) I've heard all about that before (in disgust)."
That's my eighty year old jaded businessman trapped in a second graders body!
Sometimes when I make stuff out of yarn I wind up with leftovers. Every once in a while it is a whole skein of the stuff, but more often it is bits and pieces not really long enough for any other project. So when I have gathered enough odds and ends I start an ugly blanket. The first two I made for the boys. Just a collection of nowhere near matching yarns crocheted into a blanket. Now the girly gets her turn. This blanket will have light brown, dark green, pure white, burgundy, blue, grey, and whatever else falls into it. I believe there is even a skein of super soft light green baby yarn to use. No one will ever have one like it (nor will they want one), but it will be hers from her mommy. And she is excited about it! LOL. Kids are silly.
I will post some pictures as the ugliness takes shape.
My husband doesn't know what I got him for Valentine's Day. It isn't anything expensive or big or great, but he knows I got something. I have been playing a game with him that goes a little something like this:
Ted: What are getting me for Valentine's Day?
Me (looking sideways at him): Do not even lie to me!
Ted: WTF!
Me: I know you have been snooping around and already know, so don't lie to me!
Ted(flustered): I have no idea what you are talking about!
Me: You know that I know. And I know that you know. So DON"T LIE TO ME! GOD, you nosy poop.
Ted....walks away shaking his head!!
I will post a picture of his gift tomorrow.
Max and Ruby, the cartoon bunnies, need CPS intervention. And they all just go around ignoring the problem. Grandma doesn't live there, the parents seem to be non-existent, and they are THREE and SEVEN!!!! C'mon, let's have an intervention before someone gets hurt.
My husband wanted to eat at a local chicken house with K, F, and C in the name tonight. I said I would rather not because their gravy seems to taste weird, like ladybugs. Hubby says "I've never licked a ladybug!" Well, neither have I, but one flew into my mouth and it is a taste you don't forget.
Static electricity should be illegal!
Although I would like to blog about what a chickenshit I am when it comes to confrontation or possible scenarios where I should be able to tell people things that aren't necessarily what they want to hear, I think it best to just not. But know that I will take a trip in a handbasket (not one of those fancy Longberger baskets either, some cheap Dollar Tree crap with Chinese lead paint) when it is time to take my journey.
My family is trying to drive me into the nuthouse. And I wasn't too far from the front door to begin with. Over the weekend, my husband found great delight in doing all the things that get under my skin.... talking about my jobs, i.e. laundry, dishes, toilet scrubbin'... then he would say "why can't you stop being violent.. don't you love me" while grinning. The kids must have picked up on his cue and began to tag team me with requests and complaints galore. Cory tried to make olive oil and herb pasta.... with vegetable oil! Later he made spaghetti in a dirty pot! GRRR....
So I thought the tides were turning when we went furniture shopping. We have been in heavy want of a new couch and such. Ted was finally convinced and we bought two couches. Yippee!!! Until he started talking about how I should be nice to him since he bought me furniture. What the... huh?! Am I the only one who sits on this stuff? Am I the only one who enjoys its comforts? I think not.
By the end of the weekend I had threatened everyone (and I mean everyone) that I was gonna kill 'em. Just dig a hole under the house, bury them up to their nose, and let the worms crawl in and finish the job.
They seemed to have straightened their acts out for today. But I am prepared with shovel in hand to take care of these yahoos if they get to feelin' froggy again!
:0)
I tried to cook for my family. A nice meal of baked macaroni and cheese. I used a recipe from the internet that sounded reasonably easy for the first try. It wound up with cooked egg on the bottom, nearly no cheese or cheesy taste, and costing a good five times more than your Thick n Creamy Kraft variety.
Bought an exercise ball to try and increase some muscle tone and flexibility. Nearly killed my shoulder and foot joints using the pump to blow it up. Pushed all my belly fat into my lungs blocking all the oxygen from my brain. Trapped myself on my back, on the ball, like an upturned turtle before losing my balance and flying off the ball into the television stand in my bedroom. Grrr.
I had a dream about my arthritis. I can't remember the details, but it prompted me to send off for my medical records from the Shriner's Hospital. Weird.
I signed my youngest up for the maximum possible pre school fun this summer. It will keep us all alive.
I made cookies this evening. I served them for dinner to my son. Sue me.
The $70 bag o stuff for the Baby Bear Scouts of USA was all made in Vietnam. I mean COME ON.
Having a forty-plus minute internet relay conversation on my cell phone with a concerned deaf parent, while tending to four chatty children, drinking pretend tea (and feigning my enthusiasm), and eating a real cookie.
Logically explaining to my daughter that she cannot save the rotten pumpkin that is leftover from Halloween unless she wants to mop up it's disgusting, yucky slime and deal with the WICKED EVIL odor.
Surviving the rapid fire farting of a roomful of children on any given afternoon. These kids gang up and just let em rip. They also need to know the odor eater. Just sayin'.
Discreetly suffering in the driver's seat as I transport my odorific teenager and his equally odorific friends back from practice without ripping off my nose and throwing it out the window. I didn't even say "Pewwwww". But I wanted to.
Eduring hours of Daniel speaking to me confidently about subjects he has no basis in reality to speak to me about. Like parenting and DNA scanners.
My darling girl has a love story with her actual name in it. I was watching this movie when she was a tiny baby and noticed the name in the subtitles. LOVE IT!
Our sweet boy Daniel competed in his first pinewood derby Sunday. On Saturday, my friend Nancy came down to visit and mentioned that her dad used to have a pinewood derby named after him. When Daniel returned home with his trophy, ribbon, and patch it was from THAT derby. He placed fourth in the race and third for car design. He is just tickled pink! But the excitement fades fast as he starts to plan for the overnight camping trip to a zoo in the spring! He can barely contain himself! Congrats, Daniel!
I have been playing around with some features for the blog. If you came by when the music was automatically starting I have disabled that. The "jukebox" is now on the sidebar and will only start if you want to listen. Just click on the play arrow.
For my mother-in-law, I have added Willie Nelson's Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground. Enjoy, Peggy!
