For Chanda

My five-year old students are
learning to read.

Yesterday one of them pointed at a
picture in a zoo book and said,

'Look at this! It's a frickin'
elephant!'

I took a deep breath, then
asked...'What did you call
it?'

'It's a frickin' elephant! It says so
on the picture!'

And so it
does...

Take A Look At My Puppies, and other stuff

 

Yesterday was Mischief & Mayhem's 5-month birthday. It was also the day I took away their manhood. Yep, they were neutured. They are doing really well and I don't know how I'm going to be able to restrict their exercise and movements for the next 7-10 days. The boys act like nothing happened and are still try to play rough house. Oh, Mayhem is the puppy with the one ear up, one ear down. Chances are that his ears won't stay that way but we are secretly hoping they do. It's such a cute look for him.

Counting down the days to our yard sale. Most everything is priced and I've managed to borrow a couple of tables from co-workers. I have to pick up a couple more from my folks, and my hubby has to get a few from his boss's church. Tomorrow I'm going to the newspaper office to place the advertisement and I have to make and put up signs. We are keeping the girl home from school Friday to help us. I know, I know - bad parenting, right? Please keep positive thoughts that the rain stays away and we have a successful turnout so that we make lots of money. It's for my boys fence, you know.

Trying to reconnect with my brother. I've managed to go visit him 2 Sundays in a row. It's been nice. Of course, this last visit I managed to piss my mother off with a comment I made about her getting Alzheimer's. She said it hurt her feelings. Long story short is that if she brings up the subject again to me, I've got a few things to say to her that I didn't feel the need to repeat in front of an audience.

The Elections stuff - I'm really not happy with either of the candidates. I don't want to NOT vote so it's looking like it's the lesser of two evils. Now I just have to figure out who that is. So many things about the candidates and their VP choices scare me.

TTFN!

Hurrican Ike's effect on my neck of the woods

Copied from an email I sent to my friend on Monday, 9/15. Sorry for being so lazy but at least I'm admitting it, right?

Well my area got some of the rain from Ike yesterday. We had a ton of rain in a short amount of time. Winds were up to probably 45MPH. But the rain wasn't huge stinging drops, it was more like misty rain if you know what I mean. We lost our power around 7:30 a.m. and it came back on around 9 a.m. Something that never occurred to us while our power was out was our sump pump. After the power came back on, I went downstairs to my basement to start a load of laundry and saw streams of water in my laundry room floor. Then I flipped on the light in the main part of the basement where there is indoor/outdoor carpeting and all of Dean's fishing equipment, a couch, TV, couple of chairs, and the furball, and I all of a sudden noticed the carpet was squishing. All the water that the sump pump would normal keep out of our basement, seeped up through the floor! The sump pump has been working over time since then and we've been vacuuming up the squishy water out of the
carpeting, and running fans to dry things out. Dean moved our DE-humidifier out of the furnace room and put it in the carpeted area. We also had a tiny leak in Gabby's room right where the sewer trap comes out on the roof and water came out of the ceiling fan. I think it was blowing rain so hard that water came through the vent on the side of the house and it blew down through the fan. The fan was completely dry and the ceiling too. Only evidence was a wet bed spread. So, even though what happened to us is NOTHING compared to the Texans, it hasn't been fun to deal with.

So yeah, that's what happened to us. Three days later and even with running the humidifier and fans, my basement is starting smell. Dean thinks it's the smell of rabbit pee but my nose knows the difference between rabbit pee and wet basement. Ugh!

Excuse me for being gone so long

Once again I have fallen into the habit of being a shitty blogger. What can I say - I've just had too much going on (not necessarily blog-worthy), to keep up. Yet, I still manage to read my favorites. I always have time to read you all. What's been going on, you ask?

1) The pups. We are slowly but surely coming along with them. I'm working on almost 2 weeks of not getting up in the middle of the night to take them out to potty. MIL told me on Labor Day that they should be old enough to hold it so we began that night. There have been less than a handful of accidents, never poop, and I'm okay with that. I wish I could say I'm back to my old sleeping habits but I'm not. I mean, it's definitely better but I still wake up every morning around 3:30-4:00 a.m. and toss and turn until my bladder says, Help! or my alarm goes off. Then by the time I take them out, feed them, and take them back out again so they can poop, because breakfast is a trigger for them, I've got something knocking at my back door and it's time for me to do my morning constitutional. Sorry for the TMI but it is what it is. Our next goal is to work on getting them to let us know they need to go out when we have them in the house with us. Boy! Is that a tough one. Trying to figure out normal puppy sniffing from hey I've got to shit/piss has been fun (NOT).

2) My girl has been back to school for almost 4 weeks now. She seems to be loving the 6th grade. Long gone are the days of no homework on Fridays though. She's been lucky up until now. There have been a couple of issues where she forgot an assignment that was homework. We gave her one oops and then a couple days later she forgot an assignment again, she lost her privilege to play with her friend after school/homework done and checked. Consequences for her actions, ya know. Otherwise, homework time hasn't been too bad. In the past, she and I have had some battles on it and Dad has had to take it over. Usually, I have absolutely NO patience when it comes homework time. She's been pretty cooperative. So far.

3) We decided that we have a lot shit to get rid of and that we are going to have a yard sale. Going through our things and figuring out what we wanted to get rid of, I finally decided that I'm getting rid of all my baby stuff, maternity clothes, etc., and the proceeds will go toward putting in a fence for our pups. Even though I finally came to terms with myself that I'm never going to have another baby it was really hard for me gathering it all together. I broke down and bawled hysterically during the process. I had sent G upstairs to get a large garbage bag for me, she couldn't find where I told her they were at, so I started up the stairs to get it myself and ran into her coming back down stairs. She was all alarmed at my state and asking me what was wrong. I just waved her off because I couldn't talk coherently. I think D told her because when I came back down, she came up to me and gave me a huge hug and kiss. There are a couple of things I will pull out as keepsakes for G but the rest is going. Of course, I've had more than a few people tell me that as soon as I get rid of it all, I'll get a huge surprise. I hate to tell ya, but that kind of stuff doesn't happen to me. I only read about that happening to other people.

4) So have any of you ever been in a situation where you've always been the better friend to your friend? That's me in a nutshell. I've had the same BFF for the last 21 years and we've been through a lot. But the most common theme in our relationship is that I've always been the better friend. I honestly don't think my BFF means to be such a shitty friend but you know what, I'm finally at my wits end and have decided that she can be the one to call me. I'm done calling her. The last time I've spoke to her was the day after we got the pups. I haven't heard shit or shinola from her. Oh, I take that back. My ILs ran into her Labor Day weekend at a block party and she was all, Yeah, I really need to call Susan, and get down to see her puppies. It's just that I've been so busy. Typical excuse that I'm sick of. I actually think I'd be more depressed about this if I didn't have my other friend to talk to. The thing is is that I've never actually met her IRL. I "met" Marsha through an online parenting community we are members of, and we took the plunge maybe 6 months ago and started calling one another. She is usually the one to call me because she has Vonage and it doesn't cost extra, but if we aren't talking on the phone, we are emailing each other. She lives in Texas and I'm in Illinois. One day, I will meet her.

So that's pretty much it. We are having some signs that Autumn is on the way. Yay! It's probably my favorite season. All the orchards around my area reported excellent apple crops so I'm anxious to go apple picking and all the baking that goes with it.

I wish I could say I'll do better with this blogging thing. I've said it before and look where it got me. I hope my little audience that actually reads me understands that I'm a better reader/commenter than blogger.

Update

Now that we've had the pups for 3 weeks, I can finally say I am starting to relax a bit. The first 2 weeks was not pretty! Hell - after 4 days I was ready to ship the scoundrels off. I was about to lose my mind. A lot of it had to do with not getting serious help from my hubby, Dean. When I had my mini nervous breakdown, he realized he'd better get in gear and start helping more. Once we started confining the pups to one room (the kitchen) when not in their crate or outside in the makeshift pen we put together, things started getting a bit calmer. However, during this time my appetite had gone to shit, my stomach was constantly nauseous due to stress, and I wasn't sleeping worth a darn. I think I lost 5-7 lbs. One hell of way to lose weight. It was also at about 2 weeks that I asked Dean if he thought we were making any progress on the house breaking. He pointed out certain things that the pups are starting to get and that it was not going to happen overnight - we have to break the bad habits and that they have to learn to hold it. After being told by several people that it was going to take time and not happen overnight, I started feeling better. Our girl has been such a big help. I'm really proud of her stepping in and not complaining about getting up during the night with me to take the dogs out. Last night was the last time though because she starts back to school tomorrow. I'll be glad when we are finished with all of their shots. Owning two dogs is quite expensive. They have to go back one more time to get their final shot and then I need to take them back to be neutered. I was going to take them to our local spay clinic but they aren't making appointments until September 2nd for November! I can't wait that long. I wish I could because $90 for 2 dogs as opposed to $270 at the veternarian's is really sweet. One thing about the vet's office is that they do give them a shot for pain when they wake up and also send home pain meds but the spay clinic does not. Enough of about the puppies.

Yes, G starts back to school as a 6th grader tomorrow. I can't believe my girl is starting middle school! She gets a locker this year and of course, we had to buy stuff for her locker - magnetic dry/erase board, magnetic mirror, and a something that can hold bits and pieces.

Finally, we finally have more signs that my girl is starting puberty. Over the weekend she started complaining about her boobs hurting her. I asked her if it felt like she had knots and she said yes. She also said they hurt if she barely bumped them and/or the water from the shower beat on them. Then last night she as she got out of the shower, she called me upstairs and asked if it was normal for her nipples to turn red. They weren't red per se but you could tell that they were darker. I confirmed to her that yep, it was totally normal. So yikes! My baby is starting the process of becoming a woman. *sniff*

So that's my update. Boring I know but I felt like I should give one. It's so easy to be a lurker and I really don't want to fall into that trap again. I plan to update this blog a bit more now that I feel like my life isn't in such a turmoil anymore.