Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Sickness Logic

This weekend was a long weekend. Daughter and Older Son's birthdays are today and tomorrow respectively. So to celebrate the occasions, it was Daughter's weekend to decide where we were going to eat. It also meant a trip to the next town. Now Younger Son has been fussy all weekend long, crying at the drop of a hat over nothing, and overall just wanting to misbehave. He got up this morning complaining about a sore throat and with a cough that made me cringe. So I drugged him with Triaminic and sent him to school. Fifteen minutes after school starts, my phone rings.

"Mrs. Mom?"

"Yes."

"Younger Son's in the bathroom. He's sick."

"I'm on my way."

So I went the 5 miles or so to pick him up. The boy I put on the bus this morning was not the same boy I picked up. Before the bus he looked fine. At the school, he looked sickly. Even his lips were blue (which is usually what happens when he gets sick like this). Do they have lights in there that just magnify sickness? Walking out to the car, I asked him, "Did your belly feel bad this morning?"

"Mmm-hmmm."

"You didn't tell me that this morning." He says nothing. So driving on the way home I got to thinking about the entire weekend. "Younger Son, have you felt bad all weekend?"

"Mmm-hmmm."

Crap. That means we've all been exposed to it, who knows how long he was carrying it before it hit. And you know how when someone in the house has something you feel like you're coming down with it? I really don't feel too good. My stomach is queasy and I'm hoping that it's sympathy sickness, since I've got to take Older Son to a halloween strings concert tonight.

And why is it that when kids get sick, they want to eat everything they really don't need. Younger Son didn't really eat any breakfast this morning, understandably, and finally ate a popcicle and a couple of crackers a little bit ago. But once he realized it was lunch time, he started looking for food. He wanted bologna. I told him I really didn't think he needed bologna. So he said hot dog. Same thing. I offered him chicken noodle soup and said a quiet thank you when he turned the grease down. So he finally picked out spaghettio's. Probably not the best choice but hey, he's eating. So I go back into the kitchen and tell him he left the refrigerator door open, alarms going off in the back of my mind. Why was the door open? What did he need in the fridge for spaghettios? He proudly says, "See what I did?" Then I realize, the meat tray is open and the hot dogs are gone. He put hot dogs in his spaghettios. After I told him he didn't need hot dogs.

Glad I'm not the one who ate them.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Meltdown

Halloween is one of my favorite times of year. I love the sinister ideas that go behind it, the "evil" lurking around the corner, the cool nip in the air, changing of the leaves, carving pumpkins. And then I hate it. I hate the commercialism that surrounds it. Today I bought roughly $15 of candy so that the kids can take it to school next week and hand it out to their friends at their "fall party". It is called a fall party for two reasons. First is because it's fall...duh!! Second is so that the teachers don't have to worry about costumes and faculty don't have to worry about upsetting parents that don't like Halloween. Whatever.

This afternoon, I took the kids to Wal-Mart (what was I thinking!!) to get some Halloween treat bags to put their candy in. We walked down the candy aisle and Younger Son states he's looking for Crabby Patties. They weren't where they were before. So he eyes dum dum suckers. And proceeds to ask for them. My answer....NO!! He starts to pout. So I tell him they don't eat those when I buy them. He says something about the root beer ones. I tell him no, I'm not buying the suckers so that they can eat everything except the root beer and leave those behind. So they can go back to the bowl and look in it and turn their noses up at the root beer ones and drop it on the floor for the dog to eat. No. Tears start to fall. My answer is still no. I grab him by the hand and pull him down the candy aisle, still crying, and show him Crabby Patties. He pouts and says he doesn't want them, until I start to put them back. Immediately the tears dry up and he declares them all his. Then we make it through the rest of the store without any further incidences.

I hate Halloween.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Mrs. Weasley I'm Not

I mentioned in another post that we went to Evansville a couple of weeks back and got the kids halloween costumes. Older Son had to pick out a costume that would allow him freedom to play his violin, since he has a halloween concert coming up Monday, costume required. He decision was to be Harry Potter. Again. We got his robe and wand but still need to get his glasses. Of course, Wal-Mart does do not carry just HP glasses. So off to the next town we go to Halloween Express. There we hit the jackpot. Not only did they have his glasses but they also had the tie, scarf and the kit to create a HP scar. But ya know, I am not about to pay $20 for a tie, $20 for a scarf and another $15 for a make up kit when you know all the kids want is the sticker scar. DH has plenty of ties for the boy to choose from, and I can buy a cheap make up kit from wal-mart and create a scar but the scarf was something else. I've known how to crochet but I've never knitted, don't even own knitting needles. Now I'm not saying I wouldn't like to give it a try, I would. But at this point I was a little time crunched to be learning knitting techniques to get a scarf completed by Monday evening. So off to Wal-mart I went (again) and paid $4 for gold and maroon colored yarns. I finished the actual crocheting last night, washed it, and put the fringes on it today and to my surprise, my hand HURTS. Or actually my pinky finger and ring finger ache. This is one of those times I would love to have the powers to point at a pair of knitting needles and have a scarf created from my own thoughts. Instead I have this....
We'll see what he thinks soon...


Saturday, October 20, 2007

Toss the Poodle

Older Son went to his first dance last night and then stayed with his friend. This left Daughter and Younger Son to fend for themselves today. Daughter went through the house first thing this morning and opened every window. So early it was almost cold by the time she was finished. At one point during the morning, Younger Son walked by her bedroom door as she was walking through the front yard and he hollered for her.

"Daughter!! You want to play toss the poodle?"

"What's toss the poodle?"

"You toss a poodle back and forth."

I think that last bit of information was a given. Duh immediately went through my mind when I heard him say it. So later I asked him, just where did he plan on getting this poodle.

"Oh, it was a car."

Sounds like a poodle to me.

Monday, October 15, 2007

100 Things About Me

I've been thinking about working on this for a while now and figured it was time to get it done. Here's my list:

1. I never thought I'd become a HUGE Harry Potter fan.
2. I played flute and piccolo in school.
3. I still watch ER even though I feel the show has lost it's groove.
4. I got married in 1996 at 19.
5. Many people thought it would fail, we are still going strong.
6. I have never smoked or did any kind of drug.
7. I am glad that I have two boys and not two girls, one girl is a handful.
8. I hate public speaking and am actually shy in most situations (except at home).
9. I have one "little" brother who is actually 9 inches taller than me.
10. I feel, at times, that I am a horrible mother.
11. I lived in Mississippi with my husband the first year we were married.
12. I love Diet Sundrop.
13. It cannot be found in any place that my husband's family lives.
14. I go through withdrawals when we visit his family.
15. I hate tomatoes and tomato soup but I like other food products that are made from tomatoes.
16. I hated fried okra until I got pregnant with Brady.
17. I love Halloween.
18. I have no fear of black cats since I used to have one.
19. I don't have any tattoos.
20. I had 3 sets of piercings in my ears. Two have grown up.
21. I type with my fingers on the correct keys.
22. I can type over 60 words per minute.
23. I used to wear beads in my hair, just because.
24. If I was younger, I'd still do it.
25. I love candles.
26. I hate my fingernails because they are square and look like they should be on a man's hand.
27. I don't like painting my nails because it draws attention to them and the paint peels the next day anyway.
28. My first and only concert that I attended was Kenny Chesney, Lila McCann and Yankee Grey. I was 21.
29. I hate that my husband drives a truck but grateful he has a job that supports us.
30. I was offered a scholarship to UT Martin based on my ACT scores.
31. I was .25 short of the required GPA in order to accept it.
32. I had a lot of friends growing up but I didn't have a "best friend" until we got a neighbor.
33. She was the maid of honor at my wedding and she was only 16.
34. She no longer speaks to me for unknown reasons.
35. My husband and I dated a short time in high school.
36. He tried to "break" me during a marching rehearsal the first day we met.
37. He couldn't.
38. My husband is hot natured and I am usually cold natured.
39. This causes problems when he wants to turn the thermostat down and I want it up.
40. He has learned to deal with it warmer and I have learned to deal with it colder.
41. I was a psych major the first time I entered college.
42. I had to change to a business major in order to receive funding to complete my degree.
43. I graduated from jr. college and turned 30 in the same year.
44. I lose and break sunglasses often so I buy cheap $5 glasses.
45. I had many people tell me at 25 that they thought I was 16.
46. My husband gets dirty looks when we go out on dates together.
47. I find this funny. He doesn't.
48. I hate driving in citites.
49. I read the last two Harry Potter books in 3 days.
50. I love mashed potatoes and gravy. With rolls.
51. I love to read but I'm not a big fan of poetry.
52. In high school I wanted to be a lawyer.
53. I changed my mind because I hated to stand in front of people and talk.
54. I still love to argue though.
55. I'm addicted to Sudoku puzzles.
56. They usually calm me.
57. I miss marching band.
58. I miss the thrill on being on the field.
59. I have only seen an ocean one time.
60. It was too cold to go in.
61. I have never been further west than Oklahoma City and Fort Worth.
62. I think I would love to travel internationally.
63. That scares me too.
64. I did not attend my ten year high school reunion.
65. I don't know if I'd attend the next one, if there is one.
66. I love music, but I have no rhythm.
67. I seldom drink coffee, even though I love it.
68. I hate politics. I think most politicians are liars.
69. I am a packrat. I hate throwing things away.
70. Caffeine does not help keep me awake during the day but will keep me up all night.
71. I usually beat Hubby in rummy when he plays me.
72. He stopped playing with me because of this.
73. I hate listening to people who come from the north try to pronounce names of places from the south.
74. I spent 3 1/2 weeks drawing and painting my bedroom in high school. I painted it with an artist's brush.
75. My parents paneled over my painting when I moved out.
76. I still have pictures of my patterns.
77. I started crocheting a blanket when Bryce was a teeny baby. I have taken it out more times than I can count. It's still not finished.
78. I don't understand football.
79. But I do have two favorite teams I root for.
80. My husband has two different favorite teams.
81. I don't like late night television. I find it stupid.
82. I can't sleep in socks unless my feet are cold.
83. If my feet are cold, I can't go to sleep until they warm up, which usually requires socks.
84. I love the music to Phantom of the Opera but I have never been able to sit down and watch any version all the way through.
85. I hate carrying purses but I do anyway.
86. I usually mow the yard during the week while Hubby is gone so that he has more time with us when he is home.
87. I hate websites that have so many ads that they take forever to load.
88. I eat french fries with honey mustard, sweet and sour or barbeque sauce.
89. I will only eat sweet and sour chicken and veggies from chinese restaurants.
90. Hubby and I aren't allergic to any medications but Brady and Belle are both allergic to different types of antibiotics.
91. I don't sleep well when Hubby isn't home but I won't take sleeping medication to help because I want to be alert if something happens.
92. My kids are one of the best things that I have.
93. I am amazed by siblings. I have seen siblings that aren't twins by birth but look so much alike. I can't believe that my kids are completely different, as are my brother and I.
94. I grow tomatoes even though I don't like them. I grow them because Belle does.
95. I grow squash as well. Brady cried when the plants died this year because he likes squash, too.
96. Even though I need the break, I sometimes find it hard to enjoy a night to myself.
97. I love a good, hot bubble bath. With candles.
98. I love Christmas, but hate the stress the holiday creates.
99. I miss my husband terribly when he's gone.
100. I talk to him more than once, every day.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Reading Fan?

In school, you would seldom catch me without my nose in one book or another. I'd finish my class work and grab a book. I stumbled across the V.C. Andrews series when in 7th grade after an 8th grader left their book in the window in a classroom. I picked it up and started reading on it and was hooked, even though I haven't read anything of hers in quite some time (or whomever writes under her name now). I was always reading Nancy Drew, Babysitters Club, Little House on the Prarie Series and had read Gone With the Wind more times than I can count by the time I hit high school. That being said, I never picked up on the classics much and have intended to try but with the kids I really haven't had the time to get much reading done until the last couple of months. While reading a blog tonight that has become one of my favorites, I found a "game" or a list of books that you identify as follows:

Bold those you've read.
Italicize books you have started but couldn't finish.
Add an asterisk* to those you have read more than once.
Underline those on your To Be Read list.

I hate my results on this and it's reinforced the feelings that there are so many more books that I want to read, just so that I can say I know what I've missed, that I hated it or loved it.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madam Bovary
Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula

A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Now the only reason I had the opportunity to go through this list, is that I have gotten a long overdue night off. DH is still on the road, heading for Ohio, and Mom has taken the kids tonight. No one here tonight except for me, the cat and the dogs. Maybe I can get some sleep shortly...

Monday, October 8, 2007

An Eventful Weekend

Every year, Evansville, Indiana holds a "fall festival". Basically it's this huge fair with booths, food, and of course rides that covers many blocks down town. Both of my sisters-in-law live there so this year we made the 2 1/2 hour drive to Evansville and took the kids to the festival. While on the trip, I had to have music, of course, and my radio skills can rival that of a man with the remote tv remote control. If there is not a good song playing or the station is airing their many commercials, I station search. And search. And search. I find a good country station and "Red Neck Yacht Club" is just starting, so I have to stop. Before the song gets started good, DH turns down the radio and asks the kids, "What song is this?"

"This Sucks."

Now ya know I don't think I've ever come across a song by the title of "this sucks" and in all fairness he was not trying to say the song actually sucked. They all got a lesson that if they are not sucking through a straw or something to that effect, then this sucks had best not leave the mouths of any of them. But it was still funny.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Cranky

We are planning on an overnight trip tomorrow to see DH's sisters and step-dad. I have been washing laundry part of the day and most of the evening, partly so I can be sure we have clothes to wear and the other part is so that I don't have as much to do when we get home. Basically, there is always a load of laundry to be done in this house at any given time and I do my best to try to keep up. Each night during the week, DH and I talk, until his headset gives up because the batteries have died or I'm so tired I have to go to bed. Tonight was one of those nights his headset died while I was changing clothes over from the washer to the dryer.

"Get you some sleep, dear, so you're not cranky tomorrow."

"I don't get cranky because I'm tired."

"Get you some sleep, dear, so you're not cranky tomorrow."

"I only get cranky because the kids do something stupid that ticks me off because they know better than to pull the stunts they pull."

"Good night, dear."

In all fairness, I don't get cranky when I'm tired, I get weepy so plthhhhh. Oh, and we're not leaving until at least 10am so I have plenty of time to sleep in tomorrow morning so that the laundry piles can reproduce and call my name while we're gone. It's gonna be a long weekend.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Logic of Children

My kids are allowed to buy their lunches from the school two days a week (have you seen the prices since we were in school?!?!). Usually on the night before they are going to take their lunches, I will have the kids start getting them ready after supper. Getting them ready means putting their applesauce and a spoon in the box, putting their cookies in a baggie and putting them in the box, choosing their chips and putting them in the box...you get the picture. Last night, I managed to forget this whole process. Imagine my thoughts as I laid in bed last night at 11:30 and realized that I had to get up this morning and completely prepare 3 lunches since not one of them had chose to buy today. I was not happy. This morning, I get up, throw on a pair of jeans, let the dogs out, and went to wake the kids. I found Older Son, whom I did not see before turning on the light, in the hall headed towards the bathroom. The only thing I saw when I hit that light switch was a white ghost. Technically it was his t-shirt he had picked out but still gave me a heart attack. I went through the motions...what are you wearing today...what kind of chips do you want...what kind of sandwich do you want? I head off to the kitchen to start this crap while pushing the kids to hurry up and get dressed, the bus will be here in 20 minutes. By this time, Older Son is already dressed, having had a head start and is working on finding his socks. About halfway through lunches, I've seen Daughter dressed holding her shoes, told Older Son to brush his teeth, and went to check on Younger Son and found him dressed with one shoe on. No big deal, they were doing good this morning and better than most mornings. Until Daughter decided at the same time Younger Son finished getting dressed that she had to potty. She steps in the bathroom and shuts the door, later swearing that she had no idea that he was finished and about to brush his teeth, when not 10 seconds later he goes to open that door. She screams, "I've got my pants down!!!" loud enough the neighbors can hear it. I tell Younger Son to wait a minute and let her potty and then he can brush his teeth. No big deal right?? Wrong!! After 3 or 4 minutes of waiting, they are still arguing back and forth through the door, with Older Son joining in by this point, because he wants to blow his nose. So I go to the hallway, tell the boys to back off, and step in the bathroom to find Daughter holding her shorts halfway up, complaining she still has her pants down, that she has to potty and Younger Son wouldn't leave the door alone. In other words, when she could've and should've been finished pottying, she hadn't even started and the bus would be running in less than 5 minutes. I run her to my bathroom, her complaining the entire time and me telling her that she should've been finished by then, Younger Son needed to brush his teeth and the bus would be there in a minute and she'd best hurry if she was not going to miss it. The boys got in the bathroom, she broke down into tears since I'm the horrible mother that sent her to the bathroom with a toilet that didn't hold the kids toothbrushes. She came back out, boys were out of the bathroom, I threw her hair into a ponytail as she brushed her teeth. We didn't miss the bus, thank goodness, but my blood pressure was up. I dread the teens...