driving in a city

I went to the Dr today!! Of course when I got there I checked in and they said I was all set up and to go have a seat and wait, which I did.

After a few minutes they called me back up to the check-in. They told me my doctor was "stuck at the hospital" and wouldn't make it so I'd need to reschedule.

Well I was in a very good mood so I said "sure!" I went to the rescheduling station and rescheduled my appointment for next week sometime.

I left.

I decided that since I was already in town and since the night before I had used up every last remaining drop of my inhaler and since all those lovely farmers are busy kicking up everything growing in their fields up into the air and it keeps getting my lungs all clogged up that I'd hop on over to my CVS and get a refill.

So I went.

I got there and waited in line for a while and then they tell me they can't refill my perscription because it expired in May. (It's September) I told them I really didn't think I could wait a week to use my inhaler. Lately I have been having attacks around once a day. Once I was in the bathtub and had an attack.

So I had to go back to the doctor's office. They did what they could but all they could do is leave a message with my doctor and hopefully she'd get the message sometime in the next FIVE HOURS and send a call-in to my CVS.

So I had nothing to do for a while in the city. I thought I'd drive around for a bit and promptly got lost. When I finally figured out where I was I was ravenous so I went to McDs and got a chicken sandwich and a strawberry banana smoothie. Then I went to Target and got those Halloween Salt & Pepper shakers I wanted (they're pumpkins!) I also perused the dollar section (LOVE THE DOLLAR SECTION!!) and got my kids a few things, including "grow your own carrots" and a couple little Halloween-themed bags. I also saw some music on sale and grabbed a couple CDs even though there is less than 9 GB left on my computer so I can't put them on it. Then I went to Best Buy and bought another flashdrive to help get some space on my computer to go through and get rid of all these pictures, videos and documents that I don't NEED on here (for over two years). Then I went to Barnes & Nobels where I had a lovely maple and walnut scone and got my little scientists a book and myself a book on Yoga (and Duma Key but you can blame facebook for that one - everyone says it's GREAT!..of course they also liked "It" and I HATED "It"....).

After all that I crossed my fingers and went back to CVS and HOORAY!!! They had my RX!! So I bought it plus this kid's card game set, 4 games superlarge cards. They must have ran out of bags because they got this paper lunch bag and put my stuff in it. It looked like I was buying porn!!

FINALLY I'm home again! I gotta stop buying stuff or we won't need Christmas!! LOL It's all good now, I have EVERYTHING I need!! Except salt. I forgot to pick some up. Thank Goodness for the dollar store!

rant linked to stress

I have about F'n had it! I am about F'n ready to slit my wrists with my van key. I am VERY close to punching our school "nurse" in the face. I will never again use the McDonald's in Northern Danville. & I swear if that guy I married says ONE THING about it being "impossible" for someone like me who has no "job" to have a "bad day" then HE might get punched.

Seriously SERIOUSLY considering moving.

The only way this day could get ANY worse is if my house F'n burnt down or one of my kids died. That's it.

Typanophobia and labwork 2

So I got a call today saying something "went wrong" with one of the vials of my blood. They want me to come back and get stuck again!! I said "I haven't been fasting!!" indeed I had just finished my second cinnamon roll for the morning. They said No Worries!! Come in anyway!!

So I went back. I found out that it's MUCH easier to face having a piece of metal shoved into my arm when I've eaten. I still felt sick to my stomach but I wasn't shaking (very much) and the nurse didn't look at me like I was psychotic. She just stuck me (it hurt a lot worse but nothing I couldn't handle) and sent me on my way.

I stopped on a bridge on my way home and walked towards the edge. I got that same sick-to-my-stomach feeling. My "phobias" are weird. Or maybe just I am, I don't know.

In any case I'm not such a psycho when I've had food in my system!!

Typanophobia and labwork

Apparently low blood sugar drastically affects my phobias! I was required to fast for 14 hours before I went to have my blood drawn. This I did. I won't go into how torturous it was to fix a pot roast for dinner and get it started not having eaten anything for 12 hours and not being able to eat anything for who knows how much longer....

I was feeling pretty good on the way up to the lab. I had myself convinced I wasn't even worried and it was high time I got over this silly "fear" and I was feeling so good about the whole thing that I told myself I'd even watch the needle go in!! I was very proud of myself and my ability to rise above this childish fear of a needle peircing my skin.

I was good. I walked into the office and headed towards the lab. This is about when my arms started hurting from the elbows down. I kept going. Right before I gave the receptionist my name I realized I wasn't breathing. At all.

No biggie - I often unconsciouly hold my breath when I'm (terrified) nervous about going to the dentist's office, it's a simple solution to do some meditation-like breathing while talking to myself inside my head ("breath iiiiiiiiiin, ..........., breath ouuuuuuuuuut").

So I was good. They called my name and I walked, somewhat stiffly, back to where I was to sit in the high-chair-like contraption they make you sit in. I was all smiles for the nurse, but she was eyeballing me warily...like I was gonna hit her or something. This is about the time I realize my entire body is shaking like I'm having some minor seizure.

I took off my jacket and sat down, hoping that for once I wouldn't have to explain my weird reaction to something I'm not technically "afraid" of. She began making her preparations and asked me which arm I wanted her to take blood from. I said "Left, please!" (I blantantly protect my right side, screw the left LOL)

She kept on looking at me funny and said "My god, you're TERRIFIED aren't you?"

Sigh. So then I had to sit and explain to her, as I've explained to hundreds of nurses and doctors and quite a few dentists that I don't understand WHY I act like this - I'm not AFRAID of the needle...there's just something about the needle piercing my skin and entering a blood vessel that my body just uncontrollably finds horrifying. I promised I wouldn't get up and run away, I promised I wouldn't punch her or flail about widly. I told her I might cry, but she should just ignore me and go about her business.

I realized I would NOT be able to look at it, as bravely as I boasted to myself on the drive over. I had to do the usual biting of my finger and looking anywhere but where she was drawing blood and tapped both my feet but as I promised the arm she was taking blood out of remained perfectly still.

Maybe TOO still. The blood stopped coming out. I admitted in my endeavors to not eat anything I may have forgotten to up the amount of water I'm supposed to drink. She said she really hated to do it but she was going to have to stick my other arm.

I cheerfully agreed but she kept looking at me funny again. I'm guessing I either turned green or at least paled considerably. Still she stuck the other side, got PLENTY of blood out of that side and told me I'm going to have to suggest to people in the future that they take from the right side.

Once it was over I was good again. Once again mortified at how I react. I don't understand it. I understand everything rationally and I don't have a problem going by myself, holding still or having it done. If all that's fine WHY do I start shaking so badly? It's ridiculous.

I was supposed to stay for 10 - 15 minutes to make sure I didn't pass out since I had blood removed from my body and I hadn't eaten in almost a full day but I did not care. When my skin is pierced a hormone is released (oxytocin, I think) that makes me all happy and cheery and bright. I imagine it's the same hormone that makes people keeping picking their scabs off or keep on getting tattoos. I know it's the hormone that makes cutters feel good. In any case, I wasn't lightheaded or anything so I left.

I wanted to go straight to some fast food joint and get some sustenance, but I had to go to Walmart and get my stepson some more school supplies (he needed white-out....I didn't even know they still MADE white-out. What, is he using a TYPEWRITER??)

Then on my way out of town I went to Target because the last time I went to Target I made the mistake of looking at all their Halloween decorations. I should say up front that NORMALLY (and anyone who's seen my halloween decoration collection can verify) I DO NOT like anything CUTE for Halloween. I have a cute witch here or there, but mostly it's live-looking snakes, live-looking spiders, NON-cute ghosts, and a multitude of real-looking bones and skulls and skeletons.

This year Target has cutsie adorable cutie decorations. At first I thought they were ridiculous (the sparkly pastel skeletons in particular made me want to retch) but then I saw this candy jar . I am ALL ABOUT the cutesy Frankensteins they have at Target this year!!!! They are SOOO CUTE!! I blatantly don't like Frankenstein because of the whole "Science over God" thing but I am ALL ABOUT this adorable guy at Target!! Of course at the time I had already spent way too much money on my kids at Target so I refused to buy anything else other than the punch bowl with ladle and the tablecloth because last year I looked and looked and LOOKED for those two items and NEVER found them! Also I usually don't buy Hday stuff until AFTER it's over to hit those FREAKING AWESOME after holiday sales!

So I left it and went home. But ever since then I could not stop thinking about that candy jar. It's SOOO cute! C'mon LOOK at it!! HOW CUTE IS THIS?? HOW COULD ANYONE SAY NO? So I went back and bought it. It was the only thing I bought out of the entire Target so I was proud of myself. Besides, it's so cute there's no gaurantee that it would still be around after the holiday is over. AND after the experience we had where we tried to buy a pool in JUNE and they couldn't because they were getting ready for CHRISTMAS (walmart) I didn't want to chance not getting this fabulous candy dish. So I bought it. And I love it.

I still want this...whatever it is. It is about two feet tall and I assume it's a giant candy dish or something for outside but it was a little too costly for me. So I'm sticking with the frankenstien candy dish for this year.

There are sooooooooo many things at Target that I want want WANT but I don't have all that much money period. We are supposed to limit our decoration shopping to ONE item PER holiday PER year...and the candy dish is IT for this year!

Anyway after that I went to McDonalds and now I'm so full I could about barf. I shouldn't have stuffed myself but it had been so long since I had eaten I felt I deserved it LOL!

Money vs Hoarding

I've been dealing with a "pack-rat" syndrome most of the time I've been living in Illinois. It became a particular problem after I got married. Even worse after I quit my job. When I started staying home even though we were saving hundreds of dollars by not having to pay for daycare we suddenly lost over half our income. Neither my husband nor myself knew how to handle money when that much was taken away. It made us go through some pretty hard times in our marraige and it also made my pack-rat tendancies very pronounced.

If I found a piece of....lets say a flashlight. I'd say to myself "we need flashlights...I'll keep this peice in hopes that I eventually find the rest of it and hopefully it will work once we get batteries." and this would happen with several things over the coarse of a few years and soon I had so many pieces of things to keep up with that it would all just be a horrible mess!!

A few years and a few pay raises later and we are much more sensible with money and have a little more to boot. So now I find a piece of flashlight and I say to myself "another piece of junk. In the garbage it goes!! If we need another flashlight we'll just go to target and buy one."

This has made cleaning and going through the stuff I've accumulated while going through the pack-rat phase much easier! Less stress is good, right? And things are a lot cleaner. This is especially good because I am STILL going through stuff I've squirrelled away from our old house. And I'm so happy it's so much easier for me to throw things away. Now my hoarding seems strictly confined to books and nail polish. I'm getting over the nail-polish hoarding thing (I recently threw away the dried-up remains of the nail polish I used for my best friends wedding....12 years ago LOL). The book thing I can't control. In fact, after the recent discovery of an UNHEARD OF Stephen King in the dollar store I bought half the books in there, tee-hee.

I'm also on the hunt for anything classical....Dickens, Austin, a whole bunch of other books. Anyway, I've been being good about not buying any more books until I've read everything in my house. Right now I'm trying to keep my book reading down to one book at a time. Well, two - cuz there's a book that stays in the bathroom and only gets read in there. It might take me four years to finish it but eventually it will get finished LOL. I have found I get through books much quicker if I read them one at a time. I finished "Missing Pieces" in a couple weeks and "Lady Sarah's Son" I got through in five days even though it wasn't that interesting LOL

In any case having a little more money and a little more sense with the money we do have has made the whole "pack-rat thing" MUCH easier to get through. Once I have the pack-rat neurosis completely worked through I'll have to work on the weight thing. I now weigh 160 pounds. If you want to know, that's FIVE POUNDS HEAVIER than I was when I was TEN MONTHS PREGNANT with child number five (fourth pregnancy). Not. Good. At. All.

Yard Stress

I've been trying to catch up on all my housework, yardwork, etc since the kids started school again. I've been needing to mow. The thing is....the lawnmower won't start. It's just a simple push mower, but I have no mechanical ability whatsoever (even less than I used to since I am now married to a mechanic) so I have no idea what's wrong. I just know it's frustrating as heck!

My husband brought over my father-in-law's riding lawn mower. I knew how to drive our old rider but this one is so different from that one that it might as well be a helicopter. I have no clue how to even start the thing, even less use it to mow.

My husband is currently working longer hours to complete some jobs in time for the harvest (the EARLY harvest, mind you!) so he is unavailable for consultation.

So my yard will just have to look like crap!! Is there any stress thats' worse than the stress of not being ABLE to do anything?

Monsters Under The Bed

I never put anything under my bed. I have never put anything under my bed since I was five and feared those nasty little green monsters that jump up and bite you if any of your extremeties go over the side of the bed. Why would I give those monsters a comfy home? Nope - it's always bare under my bed.

Lately I've been keeping a set of weights under one corner of the bed (right next to the edge) and a shoe buddy under the other corner. When I clean my room I usually have a lovely pile of garbage under my HUSBAND'S side of the bed (I keep a garbage can under his table and I swear he misses 80% of the time and never bothers to pick it up), but I only move the whole bed once a year to vaccuum under it.

I was cleaning my room today and smelled a dead mouse. I couldn't find it anywhere - even after I cleaned up the mound of trash under my husband's side of the bed. So I moved the whole bed.

You would not BELIEVE all the stuff that was under there! All my missing shoes were under there, a bunch of DISHES were under there, every dog toy in the entire house was under there. My missing bath scrubby that I couldn't find and bought a replacement for was under there torn to shreds, as well as SEVERAL items of dirty clothes....mostly socks. I can only guess that my lovely new additions (the two puppies, now 8 months old) are using under MY bed as some kind of lair where they keep all their crap! I could not BELIEVE I was sleeping over all that mess!

So I cleaned it aaaaaaaaall up (I did find that dead mouse) and I put smelly powder down and vaccuumed the whole thing and NOW I have to remember to check under there occasionally because adding the two pups has given me basically another bedroom to clean! LOL

I wonder what they think of it now that it's all clean and bare like it's supposed to be? HaHa who knew I would bring REAL monsters to live under my bed? LOL

Bad Hair.....Month

I have three hair cycles.

Cycle one: My hair is normal. I can style it if I want it to look nice and if I dont style it it looks like I didn't style it. This cycle lasts about three weeks.

Cycle two: My hair is unusually gorgeous. I dont' have to do anything to it and for some inexplicable reason it still looks like supermodel hair. This cycle lasts about a month. It is so pretty with just washing that I want to cry. Before you get too jealous, however, you should know I have a price to pay for this gorgeous hair. It is cycle three.

Cycle three: (and the cycle my hair is currently going through) My hair looks AWFUL! ALL THE TIME! NO MATTER WHAT I DO! It looks like the world's worst clown wig. It's frizzy and breaks and splits no matter what product I put on it. Curling doesn't work. Straightening doesn't work. The only thing I can do to make it look like I give a crap about it is to just shove it all back into a ponytail and try to weigh down the frizzies with hairspray. THIS cycle usually goes around a month or 6 weeks depending on the time of year I get it. Since it's summer I'm guessing I'll have it for the full 6 weeks. It drives me crazy! I have to deal with it every few months! There's nothing I can do!!

No moral to this story - I'm just sick of my ponytails and thought I'd share my frustration ;)

Heat Wave?

These last few days have been DISGUSTINGLY humid! The heat indexs have been 115-122 (Farenheit). DRY heat would be okay...but nooooo! HERE it has to be so humid that just standing outside causes you to loose half your body weight in sweat. The heat WITHOUT the index has been getting higher and higher!!

According to my van here was the temperature earlier today:

And later it seemed it was too hot for my van to even REGISTER a temperature!!! (Either that or something is wrong with my van LOL:

IT'S HOT!!!

Take me out to the baaaall game!

Yay! Superfun night at the ball park! It was wicked humid out...I was pretty sure it was humid enough to kill an elephant. We got to race snowcones to see if we could eat them before they melted completely (I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who lost that race) and we had huge hotdogs! I had a "junkyard dog"...

...once you took off the pickle and the olives it was GREAT! I'm tempted to try a version of it at home sometime but we almost never have hot dogs.

Our team won (of course!) and here's a couple of awesome baseball shots I got :D

winding up for the pitch, and the pitch:.

That's right.....awesome!

Friday Fun Day

Allright so I haven't been posting BECAUSE Blogger in it's infinite wisdom changed how you sign in and SUDDENLY my PASSWORD doesn't WORK. I was extremely irritated (to be nice about it) but after about nine password recovery requests and about three seconds before I threw my computer monitor out a window I finally have it figured out (no thanks to Google or Blogger) and have things set up correctly FINALLY.

I'm still mad, though. There's been so many days I've WANTED to post and I couldn't because blogger apparently sucks LOL. But it's back now and since I have yet to find a BETTER (free) blog then I'll keep sticking with this one thankyouverymuch.

So anyway, my youngest son Bossman had his very first dentist apointment ever today! I went back with him, not because I was afraid he'd be scared, but to make sure he behaved. Lately he's been on a nasty streak that makes me want to rename him "horrible monster." But I shouldn't have worried. He was SO WELL BEHAVED you have NO idea!

As a matter of fact, I was biting my cheeks trying not to laugh my butt off because he was laying SO STILL and kept his eyes closed and I swear it looks like they sedated him before they cleaned his teeth. It was SOOO funny! He looked like he was unconcious! But as soon as the technition and the dentist had their tools out of his mouth he popped right up and started talking so I knew he wasn't paralyzed or anything!!

Afterward we went to Barnes & Nobles so my son The Star could use the gift card he recieved for his birthday. However I mixed up B&N with Borders in my mind and drove to Borders instead. So I had to turn around and drive to Barnes & Nobles. En route I found this radio station that has a "laughing lunch" where they play stand-up comedians and a couple funny skits. We heard one called "Cheech & Chong and Sister Mary Elephont." I have never heard a Cheech & Chong ANYTHING that I thought was funny (I don't dig drug humor - never have), but OMG I was laughing SO HARD that I was CRYING and in real danger of peeing myself. I needed my inhaler and the kids were afraid I'd wreck the car. I'm going to look on YouTube and see if anyone has a link to it I can post.

I was very good and didn't buy anything for myself at B&N even though there was an awful lot of Stephen King that I don't currently own. I may go back and buy "Duma Key" however, but as it is I spent $50 letting all the kids get one book so I'm done for a while haha.

After the bookstore we went to Walmart because Teddy wanted to buy a new fish. When we got to the fish section (pet supplies) we found a happy little 3 year-old girl who had probably every bracelet from the jewelry department that she could reach. It was rather obvious to me that she was not being supervised. We got her name but we couldn't find her mom. The little girl was not worried, she insisted her mom would eventually find her. Still I didn't feel I could just leave her there so I had one of my older kids go find a Walmart employee and after a few minutes of discussion we all decided the walmart employee could take her and make an announcement over the PA system to find her mom. The employee later found us and said she found her mom and she's safe and sound (I hope her parents weren't too worried-but then again she looked like she was on her own for a while with one arm completely covered in bracelets).

Then we headed home. Now we still have chores to do but all in all it was a fantabulously fun Friday!

And the scrawny 5 year-old saves the day!!

Bossman FTW!!

Okay, so if you are a friend of mine (or possibly a friend-of-a-friend...I'm not sure what my settings are anymore - I should probably check on that!) on FaceBook you know I've had water stuck in my left ear for about 5 days. I had gone almost completely deaf in that ear. No prob - I just tilted my right ear towards ya if you were chatting at me.

Then yesterday my right ear started hurting. I couldn't figure out WHY my RIGHT ear would be hurting when the water was stuck in my LEFT ear. I started doing all these treatments suggested by various people in my life (and on Facebook) but nothing got the water out and my right ear started hurting worse and worse.

Suddenly last night it felt like someone was boxing my right ear as hard as they could and suddenly all sound left my right ear. And this time it was completely. I'd say my left ear was around 85% deaf and my right ear was around 98% deaf. I started panicking and spent the whole night wondering what kind of horrible infection I had. Around 4 am my neck started getting sore and when I finally decided to go the doctor (around 10 this morning) my jaw felt like it was wired shut.

The van I usually drive has no brakes. For that reason I refused to drive it while I had my kids with me (duh) so while my husband (the mechanic!) took the crippled van to get it fixed I drove the van that HE usually drives. I went to the doctor and got my ears fixed right up. I was just as happy as I could be when I could hear again! Of course then we left.

As it turns out I forgot which van I was driving and took the wrong set of keys. My habit is to lock all doors immediately upon exiting the vehicle. I think you can see where this is going. I was still dizzy from the ear treatment and still in a lot of pain (they said if the pain doesn't go away in a few days to go see my regular doctor) so my brain could not function. I called The Mr. and he said:

"You've got to be kidding me!! I'm an hour and fifteen minutes away and I've got at LEAST a half an hour before I finish this job! And I don't even know where you KEEP the spare keys!"

I was devastated. The only other thing I could think of was to ask my sisters. If I was really lucky they'd both be in R_ville and one of them could go down, get my spare keys, and come get me. As it happens one sister was at work (in a different state) and the other was asleep and not answering her phone. I just KNEW I was stuck there forever!

My genius son, the Star, noticed that the windows were slightly lowered. My Baby (name of this particular van - the other one is Vera) is REALLY good at retaining heat! So much so that in the summer I open the back vents and lower the front windows slightly in order to ventilate the van somewhat so it doesn't feel like we're entering a preheated oven. Star suggested I have one of the little kids reach through it and unlock the door. Of course any adults hands were going to be way too big and Star's hands were likewise just too big to fit in that little crack. So I had my little, way-too-skinny Bossman stand up on my leg and reach through.

HE DID IT!!

I exclaimed "MY HERO!!!" and we had air conditioning running in less than a minute. Well you KNOW I went to Target (GREAT SALES THIS WEEKEND!!) and bought him a present!! I got the Star a gift, too. I ALMOST bought Sims 3 "World Adventures" but I decided to get the most out of "Ambitions" before I got another expansion pack...all I've done so far is exorcise a few ghosts LOL.

Packed night

Not sure I'll be able to finish this entry in one post but here'goes: Yesterday we went to the fair! My husband had a vacation day so we went down and had some fun! We spent some time with The Mr.'s cousins when it started raining. A lot. After a while it quit (mostly) but we decided to go to the fair anyway! It was so cheap that I even got a bracelet so I could ride rides and that almost NEVER happens anymore! Unfortunately it started raining again so I couldn't get any good pictures of the kids :(

I went on something called "the hustler." It was by FAR the SCARIEST ride I had EVER ridden! But that was mainly due to the fact that #1 there was only two or three functioning seatbelts, #2 only half the cars were able to hold people, and #3 on the far end the cart went hurtling towards a back wall and LITERALLY came up about an inch (or maybe less!) away from the wall before stopping and hurtling the other direction. It was also the first time EVER that my Angel and Bossman went on such a ride. (I made pretty darn sure THEY were in the functioning seatbelts). I thought bossman would be the one scared of the ride so I stayed next to him and held on to him. I figured my Angel would be fine because she's generally fearless. However I did worry she'd be genetically predesposed to be more like her half sister Poinsettia when it comes to the rides that "go in circles." Poinsettia insists on going on these rides and I've been on a few with her. First she's all smiles, then the smile disappears and a small, weird frown appears. Then her face suddenly goes white as a sheet and it's very disconcerting because her eyes kind of glaze over and it's like you're riding with a dead person. I've noticed that she stops breathing which is probably why she starts feeling sick so while I'm holding on to Bossman I'm telling her she should breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. All the while Angel is also smiling and laughing. Then suddenly Angel's smile disappears and the funniest frown I've ever seen comes up and she says "I'm done!" So I flag the guy down to let us off and we're off. Bossman LOVED it! I spent the rest of the night trying to convince him that he is just too small to ride some rides. My Star rode the hustler, too but he spent the whole ride looking at his feet LOL!

Soon the rain got to the point where the rides started shutting down. My husband signed my kids up for something called a "scramble." For Bossman's age they set small chicken and chicken-like birds (peahens?) and ducklings and bunnies out in a huge pen and then they set out the kids to go catch them. Bossman set out after a duck but he ended up catching a rabbit. He then brought the rabbit to me. He then went out and caught another rabbit. He brought that one to a staff member who brought the rabbit to me. I said "He's already caught one." The staff guy said "well now he's caught two" and gave me the rabbit. So I gave the rabbit to Poinsettia and went off to find the husband. Apparently when the kids catch the pets they get to KEEP the pets! There WAS one guy who "bought" the animals back for like $5 a pop, but the Mr. told Bossman he could keep his bunnies (and he spent the entire night announcing to everyone that they were HIS bunnies thankyouverymuch). He wanted to name one Ben and the other Benjamin. (I'm not sure if that's because HIS name is Ben or if it's after "Benjamin Bunny" from school...) in any case I said NO, because all I need is for someone to be on the phone and hear me yell "THA'TS IT PUT BENJAMIN IN THE CAGE RIGHT NOW!!" and then have the cops called on me LOL.

The OLDER kids (in their seperate age groups of course) were signed up to catch first goats and then pigs. None of my kids got anywhere near a goat. However my Angel caught a piglet! Then Poinsettia caught one! Keep in mind that it's been raining this whole time so my kids all came back COMPLETELY covered in MUD!! The kids who caught a pig each got $20! (Angel IMMEDIATELY wanted to go to Payless) The boys were mad that they didn't catch anything and wanted to go for rides but The Mr. had a suprise for me. There was an all-new event called the women's scramble. Guess who The Mr. signed up to go? ME. He was laughing at me cuz I'm a "city girl" who's never had to chase goats or pigs before. So whatever I've fished and camped and hiked even when I WAS a city girl so I agreed to go.

I got NO WHERE NEAR a goat. Some of them girls are SERIOUS about catching those animals! I saw one girl tackle one poor goat! LOL The PIGS on the other hand....I managed to get a hold of TWO but both times the little piggy got away and I got mud in my face. I'm sure I'll be picking the sandy mud out of my hair for days even though I've had two showers.

We had to go get HOSED OFF! LOL. The Mr. was the only one who didn't get dirty! Anyway, when we parked the van I said something was wrong with the brakes of the van. When I stopped it the brake went all the way to the floor and I always notice anything that's different ever with my vehicles (my husband the mechanic finds this VERY annoying but 90% of the time I'm always right). The Mr decided it must just be wet brakes and we enjoyed our muddy adventures at the fair. However when leaving the parking lot I started flipping out because it was as if I suddenly had NO BRAKES AT ALL! My husband (the mechanic) said there was absolutely nothing to be done and I needed to just drive home (with no brakes).

You know, it's funny how your driving style changes when you take brakes out of the equation! Especially when it's RAINING!! It took us HOURS to get home cuz when I saw a stopsign I'd let off the gas and just roll up to the stop sign and if it was absolutely clear I'd just roll through and if it wasn't I'd hit the brake (which would immediately go all the way to the floor with little discernable effect on the vehicles' speed) until I actually stopped (by the time I got to the stopsign I was maybe going 10-15mph). When we finally got home we put the bunnies in the house, let the pups out and started shoving kids through the shower even though it was around midnight.

Great night! Now I have to figure out how to take care of bunnies...and how to see if they're male or female. It's a packrats worst nightmare: 15 years ago I had a cavy named Yorrick who died around 12 years ago. I still had AAAAAALL his stuff until (I swear!) LAST WEEK! While cleaning up for the boy's birthday party I found it and said "I'll never have another rodent again I might as well get rid of this" and out the house it went! NOW I HAVE BUNNIES!! AAARRRG!

Crisis Diverted

I am weird.

Now that we've established that I can tell you about the big hurtles I have had to endure these last few years and you won't have to worry that I am nuts because you know I'm weird.

A couple years ago the worst thing in my life was dealing with the fact that I have lived in Illinois for so long that the time I've spent in Illinois was more than the time I've spent in California. This was such a hard thing for me to do, you have NO idea! I miss my hometown SO MUCH it PHYSICALLY hurts me. I call it the rusty pipe. It feels like a rusty metal pipe around five inches in diameter has been shoved through my chest, through (or around - it's a pretty big pipe) my heart and out of my back. When it's really bad I feel like someone is pulling the pipe out and shoving it back in again several times.

I've never felt that way about a person (although with the exception of my very best friend Amanda I've never been apart from anyone I love as much as I loved California).

Based on how badly I reacted to just that information I was TERRIFIED of my baby's 5th birthday coming up. I was alive for just two years when I recieved a sister. After that I have NEVER at all in my ENTIRE LIFE been in a house that did not have at least one person under the age of 5.

I moved out of my house when my brother was still young and moved into a house with two kids under the age of 2, then I proved to be very fertile and kept adding kids ;). I knew when my baby girl (Angel) was born I did not want any other kids (she was SUCH an AWFUL baby!! LOL) and maybe if she actually WAS the last one I would have been happy when she turned 5 but as it happens God decided it would be funny to, while we were planning Ed's surgery to ENSURE no more kids, pop another baby in me.

I tell you what I CRIED when I found out I was pregnant AGAIN!! I just KNEW this baby was going to be even worse than my Angel! I was going to have it before Angel even turned two! I was a wreck! But then he came and he was just the most PERFECT BABY EVER! He was just so gorgeous and smart and everything made him happy! He was so perfect he POTTY TRAINED HIMSELF WHEN HE WAS TWO YEARS OLD!!

So I was happy I had another baby. I was sure I didn't want any more babies but I realized with horror one day that he was going to turn five and for the first time in my ENTIRE LIFE I would not have a baby in my house! I immediately started freaking out. What would I do without SOMEONE I had to help take care of?

That's when I came up with the puppy plan. I love puppies and in my eyes puppies never grow up! I've had my puppy TBone for over eight years and he's still just a pup to me. So the puppy plan was perfect. I'd have my baby and I could let my Bossman grow up and the babies would keep me occupied long enough to deal with the fact that for the first time in 30 years I was babyless.

My baby boy turned five years old and every time he comes up with a new suprise for me (Lately he tells me he wants money and I say help do chores and he says he wants a thousand dollars and I say wow, that's a lot of chores) the metal pipe in my chest moves a little...but then my puppies come love on me and the pipe becomes still again. So I guess the puppy plan is working!

Depression Diverted!!

Music

Sometimes it's hard to keep the peace in a household with five kids (between 12 and 5 years old). I tell my kids all the time that the more kids there are means the more rules there has to be in order to keep everyone safe and their mother sane ;)

Still my kids manage to find things to fight about, no matter how silly or random.

Lately they are fighting over music. Yup, you read it right. They each have decided that there are certain songs that are "their" songs and NO ONE ELSE is allowed to sing them. If someone else DOES sing them then I have to listen to screaming and fighting. It's so ridiculous that I don't even want to get involved most of the time.

My youngest is 5 years-old and "his" songs are "Fireflies" by Owl City and "Bad Romance" by Lady GaGa.

My 6 year-old daughter claims my newest favorite song "California Gurls" by Katy Perry (yes that's spelled accurately) and P!nks "Rockstar".

My 10 year-old son loves "Alejandro" by Lady GaGa.

My 11 year-old stepson has claim on "Gives You Hell" by the All American Rejects (another one of my personal favorites heh heh) and Train's "Hey Soul Sister" song.

My oldest girl who is my 12 year-old stepdaughter pretty much keeps all Kelly Clarkson songs to herself - she gave me my favorite "Already Gone".

In any case my general rule while driving is anyone can sing as long as it doesn't bother anyone else and they (mostly directed at Poinsettia) keep their volume levels below the radio's volume. But then I hear screaming "SHE'S BOTHERING ME!!" When someone is singing someone else's song.

SIGH. I know they need to work out some things for themselves but sometimes it is awfully hard to ban the radio altogether when they fight over the music LOL! I guess I COULD just keep it on the classical station. Pretty sure I've got claim to all the songs on there ;)

In other music news (not really NEWS I guess) I have been ripping every CD I own onto my computer. I've suddenly become obsessed with making playlists. I even found the first CD I've ever had - Hootie & The Blowfish (their first album). I can't wait to find my Spice Girls CD just to show how big of a music looser I really am LMBO!

Driving Stress

I was already under stress because I was dealing with some massive "after weekend crap" that SO makes me NOT want them to spend a week with their mother!! (It's not up to me, tho)

Anyway I had to go shopping because we were running out of milk at the speed of light and we were already out of eggs and "jet dry" for the dishwasher. I thought I needed more rat food but it turns out there was another box hidden in there so they should be good until my sister comes back and takes them.

My stepson was complaining that his tooth hurt badly so we took him to the dentist (they said it's just loose and it will fall out on it's own) and then we went shopping. The whole drive to the dentist and the whole drive to the big town where we do our shopping I kept noticing idiots.

Being passed while I'm doing (a bit) over the speed limit (late for dentist) by an idiot was just the first of many. Is it national "Do 25 mph over the speed limit" day? Is it drive like a [insert your own expletive here] moron day? Is there a full moon?

After shopping in the big walmart we tried to leave the parking lot where we witnessed one person who stopped out in the middle of the road before going without looking and one person who didn't even pause for that particular stopsign.

Then I tried to leave town. It was a little crowded (after lunch people) but I generally keep a good enough distance behind the car in front of me so that if they stopped suddenly I could either stop or go around them but I never figured I'd actually be tested on that!!

I don't know why but the car(s?) in front of me suddenly slammed on their brakes and I mean SLAMMED on their brakes! All that lovely adrenalin kicked in nicely and everything became extrodinarily clear. I hit my brakes, realized they were trying to go for a dead stop and STOOD on my brake while screaming "HOLY SHITOLA!!" (I dont know where I picked this phrase up but I use it in situations like this) and my left arm stayed locked on the steering wheel while my right arm went over as if to keep the rest of the van from going up into the front seat (thank goodness the groceries were in the trunk and all the kids wear their seatbelts!!). Later I thought maybe I was instinctively holding back the invisible person sitting in the passenger seat even though there was no one really there.

While I was staring at the bumper in front of me attempting not to hit it I stole a quick glance to the right --too much traffic-- and when I finally stopped (about a half second later) I looked in my rearview to see the idiot who was tailgating me swerving to go around my car and he hit me.

Don't get me wrong, it was just a tap, but I heard it above whatever my kids were exclaiming and over the radio (but the radio really wasn't loud). I thought about jumping out and making sure there was no damage but then the traffic started moving. I pulled up a little (the fact that the car's engine didn't automatically shut off should tell you how little of a tap it was - the Mr ran over my daughters bike going faster while backing up out of the driveway) and saw that the car behind me didn't have a scratch on it and I immediately assumed there was nothing wrong with my van either and that's about when I started getting angry so I went with the traffic and got out onto the highway.

My body deals with the onset of adrenalin extremely well, but it doesn't take coming down off it well at all! That was about when I started cursing every idiot on the road ESPECIALLY the moron who hit me and ESPECIALLY whichever moronodon stopped short in the FIRST place! I was pissed! After I was done spouting out my profanities (which I had to apologize to the kids for) I got the headache and the nervous jitters, shortness of breath, and heart pounding from all the unused adrenalin.

I think I was over halfway home when I was calm enough to thank God no one was hurt or more seriously hit.

I was happy to get home and away from all the idiot drivers who are out today!!!

weird..

We just planted our garden two weeks ago and we already have stuff to eat! I don't know if it's because we planted SO LATE, or WHAT but it seems really early to me.

We have radishes and here's our first banana pepper:

We have a bell pepper too but I forgot to resize the image LOL.

I hope you are all enjoying your summer as much as we are so far!

Rainy Day Tea Party

Yesterday my Angel (6 years-old) decided she wanted a tea party. When she discussed it with me she hinted that it was exclusively for the two of us.

We went grocery shopping today and she dictated what she wanted for her tea party; cookies, juice, and candy. She also wanted a tea set but she used to have TWO of them and never used them and they ended up being broken or thrown away, so I said no.

Once we got home she made (not invited, MADE) everyone gather in her room where she had a pleasant "table setting" and we discussed the merrits of the twizzler straws and what happens when you dip a raisin in grape juice.

Miss Lady Angel then announced that she had scheduled a game session but it was for outside and alas, it was raining. But they voted on it and decided to go outside and play anyway (it's really just sprinkling anyhow).

So I'm guessing the tea party was a success! We had to ask to be excused and I made sure I thanked her for being invited. She's so funny!!

I knew my son's play was today. I rushed out the door and realized I was starving - I forgot to buy milk yesterday so I did not have my customary breakfast of carnation instant breakfast. I was worried my blood sugar would plummet, thus leaving me a walking zombie of my former self and so I rushed to the gas station, bought a slice of dessert pizza and rushed to the school. I BARELY made it there on time - the play (according to the sheet of paper that got sent home) started at 10:15am. I was immediately let in (you have to buzz in and show your identification but I have so many kids at that school they know me and knew why I was there) and I rushed to the room where the play was being performed. I was worried because I didn't see any other parents there but I figured they had all showed up at 10am to get good seats.

Imagine my suprise when I walked in ant the play was almost over!!! My jaw dropped to the floor. I saw people turning to look at me and I felt all the blood rushing to my cheeks. Here I am, THE MOTHER TO THE STAR OF THE THE ENTIRE PLAY and I didn't show up on time! There was nothing I could do so I sat down and started videotaping. My biggest worry was that The Star would be upset with me for missing the first half of the play, or for not videotaping it for his dad.

Luckily the director stopped the play and decided to start all over again. She announced that she forgot what time she put on the paper and started the play at 10:05am. Luckily another set of parents came in after me or I would have thrown a royal hissy fit - feeling like I was the only parent who did not know the play was starting early and MY kid is playing the starring role!

So they started over LOL. I got to video the whole thing but here's a pic of the star!

When it was over the Star came over and gave me a big hug (he's suddenly all about hugs lately) and his script. I told him I wanted his autograph. Then I went to get Bossman from his class but OOPS! They had already left! So I had to RUSH home to get there before the bus did.

WHEW! All I've done today is rush! Here's some random flower pics cuz my facebook friends are sick of seing them LOL:

If ya can't say something nice...BLOG about it!

**WARNING** I am mad so forgive me if I sound nasty.

My stepkids just came back from their every-other-week (or whenever their mom feels like taking them) weekend visitation that is technically court-ordered but she doesn't pay any child support so we're not sure how enforceable these visitations are.

Usually they tell us that thier mom hardly speaks to them and spends most of the weekend on the computer and they basically just visit with their half-siblings that their mom has with her current live-in boyfriend (she says they are "common law" married but obviously she's never done any research on the term because to be "common law" you have to have a legal document saying you are married - you just don't have to have a ceremony and it's not recognized in this state anyway - they are technically and legally "cohabitating")

THIS weekend however, I guess she had plenty to say to them. My 12 year-old stepdaughter came home telling us she told her she should get a job and buy a car. That in itself didn't bother me too much, but then my stepson came in almost in tears and said his mom and her boyfriend told him he was too fat and should start working out on a weight bench. First of all this child is 11, almost as tall as me and weighs around 80 pounds. He is also a sensitive soul and it's obvious that their comments hurt him.

At first I assumed he was taking something out of context and maybe overreacting (he's sensitive, like I said), but then his mom spent 15 minutes outside talking to their dad telling him my 11 year-old child needed to get an ab machine! Excuse me while I curse for a few seconds.

I am so glad my husband was out talking to her because I would have asked her what the hell she was thinking. WHY would anyone call a child fat! Couldn't she just have suggested that he use the weight bench more? Or play outside more? (instead of spending the whole weekend in front of the TV or playing video games which is what they usually do at her house) First of all he is definately NOT fat! He has the tiniest little pooch that you can hardly see if he's not slouching! That will go away when he shoots up another inch this summer. He is a healthy active kid who doesn't get NEAR as much junk food as he wants during the week! We eat fast food twice a month - and that's only if we're going to drop them off at her house.

Secondly - she is not even close to being someone in the position to tell ANYONE how fat she thinks they are! If my beanpole son is fat what in God's name does she think SHE is? She looks fatter than me and I am FAT! And if she has a problem with my son's weight WHAT does she think of her daughter? I won't let anyone call the kid any names but she is a little pudge. She's a CUTE pudge but she is definately pudgy. Would I call her fat? NO! She's 4 or something! She's heavier than any of MY kids ever were - including my stepchildren. If she's saying hurtful things to MY child WHAT is she saying to HERS?

Obviously this woman has never been in a crisis help center and seen a teenage boy bone-thin from debilitating anorexia because he didn't feel acceptance from either of his parents. I just hope we are giving him a loving home that will fight any bad feelings he gets from his mother. Having had family members with anorexia and bullemia, calling someone fat is a red-button issue with me. I'd never do it - I think it's better to tell someone how to be healthier than to put them down.

I'm really hoping she was just dumb and didn't know how stupid and hurtful she was. I'm really REALLY hoping. Because if she's being hurtful on purpose we'll have to reconsider our custody agreement. But for now we will sit and convince our wonderful little boy that he is nowhere NEAR "fat" and give him some ice cream. Then we will go to the park and play.

*****THERE!! I feel better!!*******8

At least we're alive....

I guess it's a GOOD thing when your morning is defined by the fact that everyone is still alive but by golly I don't need this kind of stress right now!

Yesterday my husband suprised me by telling me "by the way, mom & dad are coming over for dinner tonight." If he was any other man I probably would have slapped him, but lucky for him he's special lol. I cleaned up real quick and managed to put together a dessert and shoved it in the oven. My husband grilled pork ribs and I baked potatoes and we cheated and bought salad from our local convinience store. All in all, it was a great dinner, and the dessert was suprisingly fantastic.

I did not use the stove-top, I used the oven and I usually (obsessively compulsively) go ahead and make sure all five dials are in the "off" position before I leave the stove, then double check the oven dial because once I accidentally left it running and I have never ever heard the end of it from my husband. However since people were there and since I knew The Mr was grilling outside and did not use the stove and since I knew I used the oven I just made sure I shut the oven off and that was that.

This morning I woke up to a strange smell. My brain told me it was gas but I figured it couldn't be because I made sure the oven was off. The Mr didn't say anything about the smell and I knew my sense of smell isn't the best so I tried to ignore it but it wouldn't go away. I asked my oldest daughter Poinsettia to check all the knobs on the stove and make sure they were off. She came back in a microsecond and said they were off.

I suspect she just looked at them though and didn't acutally check because the smell started really freaking me out and I finally checked it myself and guess what? The left front burner was turned up all the way open!

Three possibilities: One: Somehow I turned the thing on without realizing it (hopefully NOT in my sleep - that would be very disturbing). Two: A kid (or two) came out and either messed with it or tried to turn it on or maybe even wanted to try to cook something and since it didn't light they just left it. Three (and the most popular according to the children): A ghost did it.

I'm thinking it was #2 but of course no one will admit to it. I freaked out anyway. Luckily I was too lazy to turn off the two exhaust fans last night but since I did not there has been a constant stream of outward air flow all night long, so all I had to do this morning was open up a few windows and the smell was gone inside of two hours. Isn't the gas that comes out of the oven carbon monoxide? I thought it was one of the main components. If that's the case and it was on all night couldn't we all have died or am I overimagining things?

But first of all, I have no clue what kind of gas comes out of that thing, and second of all, the CO detector did not go off so I have to assume no one was in actual danger...but I freaked out anyway. I'm a worst case scenario type of person. I and my people believe this to be a self-protecting trait because I imagine the worst thing ever to happen and then whatever actually happened is a lot easier to deal with. And now I'm sure I will be back to obsessively compulsively checking all the oven knobs twice every night to make sure no one will die in their sleep that night because all morning all I thought was "we could have all died! we could have all died!"

Maybe I was still stressed because I've been dealing with a horde of trojan viruses on my computer and I'm terrified of loosing the three years of pictures I still have on it. I need NEED to back those things up asap - but in my mind if I try to back them up the trojan will sneak onto my CD and then infect every computer I ever install those pictures onto. Worst case scenario LOL. So The Mr and I are busy trying to get rid of all traces of the stupid viruses.

To add to all that today is the day I am meeting our new lawyer to discuss our current situation. The situation that I of course can't even talk to anyone about until it's over - which is just as stress inducing because I like to get a hundred different opinions on such events to figure out what to do and it's highly stressful to have to keep it to myself (&the immediate circle of family/friends). That added to the fact that The Mr and I feel it's best not to discuss any part of it with the children who are my main source of conversation during the day is loads of "fun" also. I struggle with this decision. Ever since I was told my mom was getting better every day and she died (breast cancer) I don't feel like I should keep things from my children. I know some can handle it but some wouldn't - at least not very well. On one hand I feel I shouldn't make them worry if I don't have to but on the other hand if there is going to be a big change in their lives I should really prepare them. But the Mr is adamant on keeping it quiet until we know for sure there is something worth talking about so I concede to his will this time.

Stress! Wish me luck (and make sure your oven is off!). I will be having a long discussion with all my kids on WHY the oven should always be shut off and never played with and I am seriously entertaining the idea of installing security cameras in my house to find out who is stealing my food & pop and who is now apparently playing with the oven! What if someone is sleepwalking?

Backyard Archeology

I hope you all had a wonderful mother's day and remembered to talk to your mommies. We did not really "celebrate" mommy day because nobody will clean and I won't let anyone use the stove. I went out and weed-whacked and eventually started planting. I planted radishes and little onion starts.

My husband was tilling the garden to get it ready for the massive amounts of plants we are getting ready to install in it. (We found volunteer lettuce and 3 volunteer cucumbers.)

We decided wince we are getting closer to actually owning this property we would start making plans on how to change the property. While we were renting we were under contract to keep the property AS IS and keep taking care of it as if she still were taking care of it (although I like to think I've been doing a BETTER job at most things). She planted literally every single plant on this property. In most cases she did a fabulous job of planting trees and shurbs but The Mr and I don't think we will keep a few of her choices. Some things we can't figure out why on earth she planted them in the first place! Most of those trees that are right up against the house are going to have to go.

There is a huge pile of what I assumed was a compost heap over by the alley. I didn't know how to upkeep a compost heap so I let the grass take it over. It is a nightmare to mow. The Mr decided he was sick of the ugly lump marring his yard and we wanted to get rid of it to expand our strawberry patch. He started digging it up and moving it. You'll never believe what we found!

We couldn't figure out what it was! Just that it was cement. The Mr thought maybe it was a cistern lid - there's a lot of those around town. I'm not sure what a cistern is...I believe it has something to do with getting water out of a well or something.

Anyway, after we cleared the whole thing off this is what it looked like.


Afterward, the Mr thought maybe it was actually a cement slab used to cover up what used to be an outhouse. LOL that would be our luck.

Still, while we were digging it up our neighbors came over and inquired about our garden. We have the honor of having the biggest garden in town. It's nowhere near the PRETTIEST by any means heh heh. But because we weren't sure if we were staying or going we put off starting the garden and it's probably a good thing, too, because last night (IN MAY) we had a frost advisory!

Here's the garden: I marked where I planted seeds with soem old fishing line so I will remember where the plants are supposed to come up and hopefully I'll be able to keep up with the weeds easier . That's my thoughts anyway.

Spring is BY FAR my most favorite season of all!!

Just a Little Something

No, I haven't been blogging. This is my stressed mom blog and it's difficult to blog in a stressed mom blog when you're just not stressed.

My biggest stress right now is those adorable puppies. They are coming up on the puppy versions of teenagers. That means that any personality traits that aren't exactly desirable start popping up. My beautiful Butterfly, we now know, is dominant-aggressive. She wants to pick fights with all the other dogs. The Mr. is talking about getting rid of her but I've watched enough "Dog Whisperer" to know that it's controllable. I've been working with her every day. Unfortunately there are days when I just have too many other things to do so I have to separate them. TBone goes outside on his run, and the other two take turns on who gets to be with me and who gets to be outside on the other run or stuck in the bathroom. I don't complain about any of it because I knew it would be hard work to have puppies years and years before I finally decided to get one. It's just work.

The house situation feels like it's coming to a close but I can't mention anything about it until it's finalized because quite frankly I'm waiting for the landlords to find another way to royally screw us over (again). I just hope we make the final decisions soon because it drives me nuts to not be allowed to talk about it with anyone.

I have stopped playing any Facebook applications alltogether. This is amusing considering all the time I spent allowing apps to go to my email LOL. Oh well. I just don't have any time. If this summer is anything like LAST summer, however, I am sure I'll have time to sneak onto one every once and a while. A part of me just thinks I've outgrown them. There are better things I could be doing with my life then spending three hours staring at my computer. I miss them, however.

Unfortunately I don't think this summer will be like last summer at all. For one thing, we will either be moving or we will be working on transforming this little trailer into something we'd be proud to own. We have floors to redo, some plumbing work we want to get done, and we're talking about installing a ceiling fan in the bedroom (well, The Mr is talking about it). We have two dead trees to get rid of and several live trees that we just can't wait to cut down. We even have a playset we want to put up for the little kids who live here and the little kids who visit.

Another reason this summer might not be like last years is LAST year my kids WANTED to help me get stuff done. This year they do NOT. They have not done one single one of their normal chores for months (without being yelled at or the threat of something taken away). So that means I have to do it all myself. My husband says let it all be until the kids help. Then our house looks AWFUL. It sucks. I don't know why all of a sudden they don't care if they live in a pigsty. But I could Dr. Phil them and take everything away until they are just sitting in a chair staring at a wall and they still won't do anything. We've offered to pay them an obscene amount of money if they'll do their chores. Still nothing. We've bought our oldest daughter a (cheap used) laptop, and all she has to do is do the same chores she's been expected to do for the past three years. It's still sitting in the closet. She doesn't want it bad enough to actually pick up two floors (three if you count her bedroom) and do the dishes twice a week. The boys haven't been allowed to touch their DS's in three weeks cuz they don't want to pick up trash out of their bedroom that they put there. It's infuriating! Summer's coming! Am I really expected to let them go to their friends' houses and do whatever they want during the day while I clean up after them like they're four? Strike that - TWO - I make my 4 year-old help me clean during the day.

I am at a loss as to what to do. It will just get harder because I'm pet-sitting my sisters animals for a few weeks and they will want to touch/pet/play with them...but guess who will be doing all the feeding and poop-picking-up? And guess who barely has enough time to read ten pages let alone do anything she actually WANTS to do like garden and draw and paint and yes, occasionally play a computer game? GUESS WHO CAN'T EVEN PLAY SIMS FOR THE PAST TWO MONTHS?? The slave housemaid known as mother.

Bah - I gotta go clean see ya!

It's all good here, though. Nothing really bad going on. :)

Asthmatic Running

I've been trying to run once a week. Believe me when you have my level of asthma once a week is a challenge in itself. However I believe if I loose some weight I will have less breathing issues and I watched a show once on a man who had a heart condition (he was 70-something) and he didn't want to live anymore but he didn't want his suicide to look like it was a suicide so he went out running and he just ran as fast as he could until he collapsed on the street somewhere and he thought his heart was giving up. But he was fine enough to get himself home later and the next night he tried again only this time he got further away before he collapsed. He kept running every night and every night he got further and further until he realized that instead of ending his life he was making his heart stronger so he ran every day for fun instead of trying to kill himself.

So I started running with a dog once a week. At first (in the winter) I could only make it one block (I count "a block" as sidewalk until it's interrupted by a street, so every street I cross I add a block to my counting) before it was hard to breathe. Then this spring I found I could make it two blocks. Finally today I made it three blocks, but my breathing - though labored- was relatively clear. I could still take whole breaths. So I walked another block and then tried running one more. I made it the whole block (I ran four blocks today!! NEW RECORD!) but that turned out to be too much.

That's when my throat and brachial tubes seemed to shrink in size significantly and I couldn't breathe. I started gasping for oxygen like a fish out of water and I started expelling air carefully like I was blowing out a candle on a birthday cake. I immediately started walking home because I did not bring an inhaler out with me (I'll have to remember to take it with me if I'm going to push myself like this in the future) and my throat felt like it was closing off all together. Even my gasping and puffing had a loud wheeze in it.

I began visualizing my airways opening much in the same fashion as I learned to visualize my netherparts opening to assist in the birth of my children. As a result of my concentration on regulating my breathing (and not passing out) my dog took advantage of my lack of control on him and began marking every post we walked by (usually I don't let him do that). But at the point my arms started feeling week and I began shaking I started yanking him along because I did NOT want to have a severe attack on the street!

I got home although I wonder if people thought I was having a seizure with the way I was gasping - although I'm just fat enough that people MIGHT have thought I was going into labor LOL. Picture me with one hand over my midriff fatpad leaning far back to inhale a huge gasp of air and then bending forward pushing air out like I was blowing out a candle and shuffling along home as fast as I could. I got the dog put on his chain right before my legs started going weak and shaky.

I rushed inside with my little I-can't-breathe shuffle and sat at my computer desk. Luckily my inhaler was already out on the desk. I had to actually take TWO whole pulls on it before my airways opened up again and the shaking ceased.

Lesson learned!! I will take my inhaler with me from now on!! In the meantime YAY! I MADE IT FOUR BLOCKS!! We'll see how far I get NEXT week!

If there ever was a blah day....

I can ALREADY tell I won't get much done today!

I am one of those people who NEED sleep. If I don't get enough I am a giant pile of goop who's only purpose in life is to stare at the idiot box (TV) with no brain whatsoever.

My husband listens to the TV rather loud. He's selectively deaf. His favorite things to watch rather loud at night are war movies or anything with loud bangs and booms. Lately he's been really good about shutting it off before he goes to sleep. Last night he did not.

I can recall four different times when I woke up, tossed and turned for ten minutes, then asked him to either turn it down or shut it off. Every time he said "Okay."

Well the FIFTH time I got mad. I woke all the way up and said "TURN THAT CRAP OFF! PLEASE!" His response? "Okay.".........sssssssssnnnnnnnnoooooooooorrrrrrrre.

Did I mention my husband has the ability to have full conversations in his sleep? I'm convinced he keeps half his brain on while he's sleeping like a dolphin. He can watch TV, he can talk to you, I'm pretty sure at least once he actually DID turn the TV down and was probably sleeping the whole darn time. I was pretty mad. I shut the TV off and got maybe three or four hours decent sleep. And I didn't have good dreams during that sleep which adds to the general feeling of NO sleep (I dreamt I went swimming - with my brand-new camera still around my neck!)

Usually when my husband gets up and gets ready for work I get up also. Not today! I barely opened one eye for him (I was still pretty mad). So of course we all got up late because not ONE of my children knows to get UP with the alarm and I have to wake every single one of my five children up every day period. So we were running late. They all got breakfast because I made them. Yesterday my oldest who does TRACK every day after school not ONLY left without her breakfast but she also left without the banana she's supposed to take to school with her so she gets a snack before track practice. I hate it when she does that because then she goes to school and tells everybody I don't give her breakfast and then I start getting calls. She's the only one who tries to go without breakfast and she's usually the first one ready to go! (She loves drama, unfortunately,)

So I get everybody ready to go out the door. I like to go down to the bus stop with them but I realize I can't find even ONE pair of clean pants! I've been gardening so I don't even want to touch my dirty pants cuz they're covered in mud and grass. It's too cold to go out in shorts and my pajama pants are cute but I KNOW all my neighbors and I don't want to be made fun of for a year for being the crazy lady who wears pajamas outside LOL. So I sent them all out the door without me.

Instead of going back to bed (which I desperately wanted to do) I decided to try and wake myself up with a healthy hershey's kiss breakfast and getting on the computer. I started checking facebook when I heard a noise. It wasn't a word - it was just a sound. It freaked me out! I've heard phantom knockers at the door and phantom footsteps walking around my living room and foyer but I've never heard a voice before! I said "hello? HELLO? IS SOMEONE HERE??" But no answer. I was on the verge of getting out my sisters recording device that she left here to see if I could catch some EVPs or whatever they're called when I heard it again, but this time I asked "IS THERE STILL A KID HERE?" and I heard the Star say "yea...."

OMG WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE?? lols so I had to get shorts on after all and drive him to school. I still don't know why he was still at home but if he was hiding he really shouldn't be making any noise because my sense of hearing - unlike my sense of smell or my eyesight - is pretty darn acute.

So now I'm faced with what I need to get done today. More yardwork (always) but I don't have any pants and it's not warm enough for me to wear shorts. Cleaning out my toilet room because I haven't cleaned the mess up that the Bossman made while getting the vitamins yet (my husband gets mad at me - WHY do you clean the TOILET but leave all that crap here?...uh cuz my BUTT touches that toilet! duh) but I can't find my nail polish remover and I still have last weeks manicure chipping off my nails. THIS is driving me NUTS. I'm halfway to picking all the leftover nailpolish off but I know how bad that is for my nails. So I could clean that all up and find my remover.

I COULD take care of the no-pants problem by doing laundry....but do you remember when my washing machine broke? My husband never fixed it. Do you know my brother in-law's apartment washing machine that we are using? Now it's leaking. BIG TIME. Like I have to use all the dirty clothes to mop up all the water while it's filling so I can wash the dirty clothes. It SUCKS. It's TIME CONSUMING and it makes me mad. I haven't done laundry in three days because I can't let it run when I'm not babysitting it and I've been running around the county every day. Today I am staying home but the lack-of-sleep issue makes me wonder if I have the patience to sit there and mop up the tsunami coming out of my dang washer. However my stepdaughter does have a track meet today and I don't think I'll be wearing shorts or pajama pants either so I guess I HAVE to do some laundry.

And I just found out that my new van - JUST LIKE MY OLD VAN in that it SAYS there is still an eight of a tank of fuel left but it's lying and it's actually EMPTY. BAAAAH.

Today is just going to suck all day LOL. Is it Monday and I just THINK it's Tuesday?

We Almost Got Scammed!

I am superparanoid. I get it from my father. I can't help it. I was brought up in a huge city halfway filled with people who would screw you over completely if it got them a dollar. I then moved to a tiny village where people tried to screw me over because they thought it was funny. I then got massively screwed over by someone who I thought was one of my very good friends.



So ya, I'm not just paranoid - I'm SUPERparanoid. I don't answer phone calls if I don't recognize the number. I don't open emails if I don't know who sent them. I may miss real things but I have never had my myspace info fished, my yahoo email hacked, and I literally "don't see" most advertisements on the internet. (It drives my kids nuts LOL)



My husband grew up in small towns where he was liked and respected (you should SEE his facebook friends list!). No one would dare screw him over because he would literally beat the crap out of you. A lot of people were too scared to piss him off. He is a little more trusting than I am.



We were looking into different loan options because we are thinking of attempting to buy the property we live on. We had saved up a lot of money but we still didn't have enough and the decision will need to be made in the near future, and if we don't end up buying this place we need to set up and research to buy a different place - preferable an actual house. So as we were looking into different options my husband went online and tried to find a loan place. He got a phone call. He did not tell me about it and I didn't question it but the time came to send in a down payment.



He had talked to a particular woman several times so I figured they all had everything down pat but since The Mr. can't leave work I had to go do the down payment. This lady told me I couldn't use the business quick pay form - I had to use the green and yellow PERSONAL form and Western Union the money OVERSEES in EUROS to some random woman in SPAIN.



Things that make you go, hmmmm. I asked my dad about it (he's paranoid, too so I knew he'd agree with me that this transaction was a little funny), but The Mr insisted I go ahead and send the money. As it happens there was an earthquake in California that messed up all of Western Union's servers so I could not send the money.



So I went home and tried to research this company - Southeast Financial Services - and the Better Business Bureau gave them the rating of "F" and it listed that they tried to contact the owner of the property that the offices have as their address and the owner said there has never once been a company or business of any kind in that EMPTY building. They have been getting complaints about Southeast Financial Services since the beginning of April and as far as they can tell there is no record of any company with that name since before April of this year.



I told my husband I was pretty sure it was a scam and the people at Western Union said they'd never heard of sending cash oversees as a down payment for a personal loan. They wanted $1800! And then we were supposed to call them back and give them our bank information so they could direct deposit the loan. My dad and I agree - just give us a check and WE will deposit it, thank you. The $1800 wouldn't have been THAT terrible to loose but if they had our bank information and wiped out all the OTHER money we have saved up? We'd be dead broke and probably homeless. My husband agreed it was questionable and he wanted to start ignoring the phone calls.



I have no such compunction. Someone messing with MY family and MY FIVE CHILDREN whom I feed and clothe? Nuh-uh. Call my a55. I called her up and left a message saying I didn't feel comfortable sending money to a company who says they're based out of the U.S. but they don't transact in American dollars. I had a problem sending money direct to some random that was never discussed. I have a problem with a company who doesn't use the company forms in Western Union. I wasn't comfortable doing long-distance business with a company that wasn't BBB afiliated.

She called me back saying the BBB was a monopolizing money-hungry company that gave EVERYONE "F"s that didn't affiliate with them. She said if I wasn't comfortable (and she couldn't understand why I wasn't) dealing in Euros she could find me an invester out of Jamaica or Russia (?). She said they've been dealing with Western Union for 14 years and they just "cut out the middle man by transferring in euros because the american dollar isn't worth much anymore". She refused to answer any questions about the empty building or the random I was to send the money to. She said the BBB was a slanderous company and there were lists and lists of names of websites complaining about them. She said they did not have accurate information. She actually got angry with me and insisted I find a lawyer.

K

LOL It's almost funny. A real professional doesn't get angry at a person for researching their company. I asked her to cancel the paperwork because we weren't going to sign. She told me to discuss it with my husband. She said he told her we desperately needed the money asap. I know that's not true because we DON'T need the money that badly. I confirmed with him and he insists he never said any such thing. I believe him.

Sorry Kathy Andrews! Not gonna get OUR money!

BEWARE OF SOUTHEASTERN FINANCIAL! SCAM SCAM SCAM SCAM!

Legacy Grapes

Around 80 years ago a lovely woman planted a grapevine. She took good care of that little vine and it flourished. Among other children she eventually had a son. One day that son inherited the property and that grape vine. He soon married and his wife took good care of that much bigger grapevine and it continued to flourish. Among other children they eventually had a son. One day that son married me.

All five kids have used that grapevine. For the last few years the Mr. and I have taken the last harvest to make jam that we could give to people as gifts for Christmas. The Mr.'s parents plan on moving far, far away. The original plan was their youngest son (my brother in-law) would get the property and we all had no say in it. That would have been fine because I'm sure he and his wife wouldn't care if we continued to use the grapevine. However, due to medical issues the parents postponed their move and the bro-in-law has since bought a new house and says the next time he moves it will be to the cemetary. Which means the parents will probably sell their property to strangers.

Now I might be mistaken but I don't think strangers will like it if we tromple onto their property and steal their grapes. It is a standard concord grapevine and I'm sure we could find some similar grapes at any old store ... but this grapevine has been in the Mr.'s family since before his father was BORN! How many living things can you say that about? I wanted a legacy grapevine.

I spent weeks learning how to take clippings from the original vine to start new vines but they'd still really be that old vine - just younger. I wanted to try to start three vines so I'd be pretty sure at least ONE of them would survive and then BAM! I'd have my legacy! We could even call our jam "Legacy Jam" lol.

But The Mr. (God bless him) only heard I wanted three grapevines and he went out and bought me three grape vines. Now I need to find a place to put them. He doesn't listen very well but he does try. He got me red white and blue (purple) grapes. Freaking awesome. I may still try for the legacy but if all four take off I'll be hip-deep in grapes! JAM FOR EVERYONE!!

For the past four years I have also mentioned that I wanted a blueberry bush. I figured if I had one I could eat blueberries whenever I wanted and maybe save up enough for a pie. The Mr. told me he LOVES blueberries! Could've fooled me - we've never even ONCE bought blueberries! So he went out and bought three different kinds of blueberry bushes.

If you care he also bought me a rose tree, a citrus tree, a bunch more strawberries (it's annoying to take care of a strawberry patch for 9 months and only get to eat one strawberry cuz my kids are pigs lol), a new blue rose (cuz the other one wasn't blue), potato starts and garlic starts. Now all I need is carrot seeds! Then I'll never have to go to a store again lolz.

Now I know I told you all that we were thinking of moving - which we still are - so I had to POT all these plants and they are all sitting in my front yard. I look like a loser LOL. Still if we move we are taking every single plant and tree we added to this property!

Got a lot of gardening to do!

Gardening WTF experiences

Things that make you go .... WTF?

My $3 roses that I bought at a HARDWARE store are sprouting leaves and beginning to bud already. The $30 roses (that I admittedly got on sale) look as dead as dead can be.

Last year our riding lawnmower died. It is now a digusting lawn ornament. So we can only use a pushmower. We have 7 yards. I raked one of those 7 yards. Guess which one didn't need mowed?

I finally got started mowing. I figure with 7 yards I could mow one or two yards a day and just have to keep doing it every single week (I'm a glutton for punishment). I got exactly halfway through the very first yard ....and ran out of gas. This in itself isn't a huge issue. I went to get one of our four gas cans. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand can't find them. NOT EVEN ONE! I looked in the house, I looked in the garage, I looked in the backyard, in the side yard, in the orchard, in the front yard, under vehicles, INSIDE vehicles.....they are just gone! DID SOMEONE COME TO MY HOUSE AND STEAL MY GASCANS??!?

W

T

F

HGINHBTNTKCTWBDOEAIIIH

A day you have to contact the state poison controll center is NOT a good day!

Two nights ago I went with my sister to a lecture at the university. We were gone around five hours and I expected my husband to watch my five children, and to a lesser extent, my oldest three to help watch the younger two.

I got home kind of late and noticed things were very, very messy. Usually expected when my husband is the only one with the kids. He doesn't believe in prevention when it comes to home maintenance.

However the NEXT day (yesterday) I noticed that strange things were in my toilet room. (In case you don't know, my toilet room is literally a room with a toilet in it. There is also a large closet that I use to keep all my girly ammo in-shampoo, facial cleansers, medicines, perfume, lotion, etc, etc, etc). Among these strange things were Teddy's trumpet case, the plastic tub I let the kids keep the legos in, and the Star's Illini seat. I didn't think too much about all this weird stuff in my toilet room but something in my subconscious told me something wasn't right. I couldn't figure out what it was so I ignored it.

Last night my kids asked for their vitamins but I was having a bad day so I told them they could just have them in the morning. I have a chewable "flinstones" type vitamin for the older kids and some "gummy" multi-vitamins for my littlest Bossman because he's still a little too young for "big kid" vits. However this morning we all got up late (again ~ I HAVE to find out why my alarm is going off so quietly! It's driving me nuts!) so they didn't get them.

Skip to this afternoon when Bossman asked me for his gummy vitamins. I headed towards my bathroom and he said "wait! I know where they are!" darted ahead of me and reached behind the toilet on the floor and pulled out the open container of gummy vitamins.

I gasped very loudly and snatched the container from him. I screeched "HOW MANY DID YOU EAT?!?" which was probably a dumb question because the only time he could have eaten any was two nights ago and he wouldn't remember. I of course, immediately panicked. I keep all the kid vitamins (the ones that taste good) up on the very top shelf of my closet. The REASON I kept them up that high was because I had heard all the horror stories of kids eating too many vitamins and having seizures, dying, etc, INCLUDING my best friend, who remembered when she was younger her little sister eating a bunch of flinestones vitamins and having to go to the emergency room to get her stomach pumped.

I called that best friend who suggested I call poison control. I've had to call them once before when my daughter drank some dye out of a science kit used to see things better under a microscope. They told me if the dye was blue I needed to call 911 IMMEDIATELY and if it was red just to watch her carefully for the next few weeks. Luckily, it was red.

Still, I did not want to call such an important number if it wasn't urgent, and I was still assuming he ate all the vitamins two nights ago - if there was going to be a SERIOUS problem it would have manifested by now (I thought). I looked carefully at the container. It still looked about the same as it did the last time I gave them vitamins - in my uneducated opinion it looked like he ate between 5 and 10 at the max (he says he ate two and two - but the label says never give more than two in the first place). I tried to look it up online but everything said the same thing.

Call poison control.

So I did.

Keep in mind at this point I was a wreck, but the nice lady said to look at the ingredients and see if iron and calcium were listed. They were not. So she said he'd be fine and if he was going to have a bad reaction it would have happened by now.

WHEW! I was so scared!

Now that I know my baby boy is not going to need to be hospitalized a couple things are really bothering me.

#1 this child can open child-proof caps.

#2 I took a closer look at those things in my toilet room. The box with my hair stuff in it he obviously got from the closet. The Illini chair and the grey box he obviously got from downstairs. The trumpet case, however (the trumpet we are BORROWING from the school and WE DO NOT OWN) had to have come from the living room. This means that this four year-old child picked up this trumpet case and carried it past all three older kids (no doubt staring at that idiot box people call a television) and then took it RIGHT PAST The Mr.!

THEN he had to have disappeared into my toilet room for at LEAST ten minutes stacking up all these things to make himself a ladder of sorts to climb up and get those gummy vitamins from the very top shelf of my closet.

What if he had fallen? He could have been seriously hurt! WHY did no one notice him taking things into my room? WHY did no one check on him?

NOW I have to have a SERIOUS talk with some people in this house. Luckily God watches my kids because sometimes I swear I'm the only person who does!!

O Monday, You Have Found Me!!

I woke up BEFORE the alarm! That should have been my first clue that today was going to be one of those trademark Mondays that haunt the masses (& Garfield).

Since I was up so early I went back to sleep. Mistake # 1 *snickers*. I got up just in time to get kids out of bed with just enough time to get ready for school and eat a quick breakfast. All the kids did get out the door when they were supposed too so I figured everything was okay.

I got on the computer to be nosy and check everyone's facebooks and my pretty blue blown glass candle holder suddenly jumped off the desk and killed itself. It is now in peices on the floor waiting for me to pick it up. I had a gut feeling that was a sign that today was going to be a baaaad day.

Even though my kids got out to the bus stop in plenty of time they all came back. It seems Poinsettia and Star decided it would be a good day to terrorize my Angel. One of them kicked her - the proof is a muddy footpring on her leg. I still don't know which one it was but Poinsettia is usually unnaturally mean and nasty after she's spent time at her biomom's house - as she did last Thursday through Saturday. It infuriates me because when I was 12 I was responsible for watching my siblings in a house where the grownups worked and didn't get home until dinner time -and that was in California in a town where we could have been snatched at any moment - but MY 12 year-old bullies my other kids. So I will have to go with them to the bus stop every day (AGAIN) to make sure my little ones are safe - not only from strangers but from their own sister as well. That, to me, is sad.

In any case they ALL came back to tell me this and that's when the bus drove by soooooooooooo missed the bus. Since I didn't get up on time I was still in my pajamas so I just threw on some jeans and sandals and a jacket (60 degree weather is still cold to me!) and drove all five of my kids to school. By the time we got there I had to go in and sign them in (in my jammies - lovely).

People probably don't realize that most of the time I have little to no sense of smell. Mostly due to allergies and the fact that I live with a smoker. Well today suddenly my sense of smell is PERFECTLY CLEAR ... and EVERYTHING smells AWFULL!!! LOL. I am fairly certain there is a dead mouse SOMEWHERE in my house - and my newly acute nose tells me it's probably in the foyer closet ... and my NEW VAN smells like CATTLE. That in itself isn't necessarily a BAD smell, but I usually prefer my vehicles to smell like strawberreis. I let my inlaws drive the van down to South Carolina and there is a yellow pollen lining the entire inside of the van - is that what smells? Does SoCarolina stink? LOL I swear the smell is coming out of the vents so is it the engin? IDK but I don't care for it- I had to drive home with all the windows open and like I said, it's still cold!

As for my house I love the smell of bleach so I'll just have to do all the cleaning I usually do with bleach today.

Ug Monday is going to SUCK ALL DAY!!

LOLZ