Wednesday, June 15, 2011

my own paradise

For some reason my imagination takes me away in the summer time.
I start to think, could we really move to a beach/ocean front area? Where my kids go to school shirtless with sand between their toes; surf during lunch and say things like hang ten and dude?
Could my hubby and I set up a little tiki stand and sell smoothies and sophisticated frozen beverages to the locals and have cool names like Leilani [lay lah nee] and Mano [mah no]? Could I trade in Ann Taylor Loft for a swim shop and walk around in a bikini and not worry about cellulite and stretch marks everyday?

I think I enjoy the laid back aspect of summer more than I realize. We all have activities going on all through the summer (boot camp, track practice, swim team practice). Sleeping late means 6:30 in our house and our days are full; but there is no homework, no last minute supplies needed, and dinner at 9 o'clock with a side of watermelon is fully acceptable.

More than anything I like that I get to enjoy the longer days with my kids. By the end of some days I'm ready to strangle all 3 of them but I couldn't imagine it any other way.

Could I trade in suburbia for paradise? Nah, I'm a city girl through and through, but a little day dream never hurt anybody. Or an afternoon cocktail for that matter, excuse me while I enjoy my summer :)

Monday, April 25, 2011

That's What Thinking Gets Me.

I thought this year they (or one) might complain about yet another tradition.
I waited for the moans, for the REALLY mom, I'm so not doing that.
I prepared myself for the heartbreak to come if (the one) offspring decided this was the year that he was done.
I rehearsed what I would say and how I would remind him of stretch marks, and leaky bladders and dammit just do it and like it!

But instead of all that, I got this....





No arguing, no eye rolling, and by lord there were even a few compliments about color choices and patterns that were thrown out there. I just sat back and listened and didn't say a word.

That boy and I have been dying eggs together for 16 years, and I'm so glad he isn't sick of me yet :)

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Does That Make Me CRAZY?!!

We're now ending the second full week of our kitchen remodel and I am S L O W L Y losing my mind. Or maybe after you read this you will say, "um hun you have ALREADY lost it."

We have had 3 different delivery dates for our appliances, each time it has been pushed back by a week or so and the two appliances that I need in order to have my kitchen at least half way livable are of course the ones that are STILL on back order.

I haven't seen my husband in what feels likes years. Between his travel, the activities of the 3 humans that wrecked my bladder and my classes, I don't think I could pick the man out of a police line up.
I informed him via text message the other day, that I am in need of hotel sex.

Preferably with him.

If he was interested to make arrangements and write it on fridge calendar. I then began answering some other texts that I had gotten that day.
A short time later I got a message back saying "he looked at his calendar and he couldn't make the first one."

All righty then.

Then another message that said, "he was right on it."

"Right on what?" I messaged back.

"Making hotel arrangements for the race", he said.

And that was when I realized I messaged my girlfriend, that I wanted to have hotel sex with her(and she hadn't seen it yet); instead of about 2 races we were talking about doing, one in which we needed a hotel room.

Thank the lord our husbands work together and she knows how crazy everyone has been lately. When I spoke with her later she told me she laughed so hard and so long that she peed her pants and couldn't stop.

Then she said, "so then should I cancel the room I booked us?"

God I love my girlfriends!!

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

ID please

I have never been a fan of the library.  I've always thought it was like this secret club for all the smart kids. Where you have to knock a certain amount of times and I can never remember it's 2 or 4  and then the librarian gets aggravated with me (quietly of course) and says, "ID please"and after its been scanned they point me over to the Nancy Drew books and say, "well good luck with that."

After I had my first child I embraced the library; we would go to story time twice a week and check out numerous books every visit. I never ventured past the young readers section, and I was totally fine with that.

My first semester at KSU dropped me right back into the knocking 2 or 4 times dilemma. I needed the library for a project on South Africa, most of my sources came from on line sites but for the sake of presentation (and my grade) I needed a "real book" source. When your not familiar with libraries in general, having your first real experience in a college one is a little nerve racking.
Which floor are the TR books located?
Why are the references books always so far away from the bathrooms?
And where in the hell is the card catalog?!!

This semester my English class has been as hard core as they come(well for a non-English major anyway). We've had a paper due every week, sometimes 2 in a week. 40% of our final grade will be based on a 4 page-10 source annotated bibliography that's due on Monday, followed by (a few weeks later) a 12 page research paper on a topic that we had to come up with based on the book the Omnivore's Dilemma, that we've been reading this semester.

Needless to say, I've had to find my "hidden inner love" for the library. The first time I ventured in to get some research done, the kids at the information desk were a tremendous help. They might of been laughing at the old lady with all the questions but they at least pointed me in the right direction and NOT towards the Nancy Drew books.

I found myself today needing to add a quote to my paper that I found in one of the millions of reference medical books that I've looked through in the past month. I walked to my aisle, dropped my bag on the floor right in front of my book, popped a squat and started writing. When I was done I looked around and chuckled to myself. I laughed because, the old lady was feeling pretty good in the old smart kids hangout. I realized that there never was a secret knock, it was (once again) my own insecurities holding me back all these years.

Then I looked around again to make sure no one was watching me because getting down on the floor that I was now so comfortable on, was so much cuter than getting up off of it :)

Monday, January 31, 2011

Herding Cats

The very first time I heard this I thought to my self, what a cute little catchy phrase. I immediately googled it to make sure that my interpretation of what I had just heard was indeed the correct one.
Herding cats as defined by Wikipedia is -  a saying that refers to a task that is extremely difficult or impossible to do, due to one or more variables being in flux and uncontrollable.

When I heard this saying years ago my kids were little and cute and 2 out of the 3 could barely talk. As time has evolved, my children have slowly started turning into those said cats that were in the saying I heard years before.

No, they don't walk on all 4's or purr and hiss at people.
No, they don't potty in a litter box, then walk in it, then walk all over my counters and furniture.
And no, they don't lie around and paw and lick themselves all day either. With puberty on the horizon though, who knows how long that last one will stay an untrue.

15, 11 and 8 are my offspring's ages as of today. A teen, pre-teen and a wanna be teen are the (task) part of the definition. I also believe that those same three ingredients could stand for the one or more variables being in flux and uncontrollable.

I'm not saying by any means that my kids are unruly and uncontrollable. But I do feel sometimes that the pulse that I thought my finger was just on, jumps around on me when I'm not looking and I need to re-position the fetal monitor to find it again. In plain mans terms, right when something starts to fit really well, the size changes on me. 

In recent days 1 child has acquired a driver's permit and now believes it is his job to take out every single curb in my neighborhood, 1 child that is starting to have girls ask him out and he JUST DOESN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO, and another one that wants me to make her division flash cards and quiz her just for kicks :)

Herding ANY amount of children is a challenge. Trying to keep up with their everyday lives and living to tell about it, is the stuff that legends are made of. In the end if I don't feed them to many trans fats and give them a little less material to tell their psychologist about then my job will have been done, RIGHT?  And after all is done and they still like me after all the herding is finished and Brian and I get invites every week every so often for coffee and Sunday dinner; then that my friends is whats called Lagniappe. And Lagniappe is what any good ole New Orleans girl is all about.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

economy pack

Maybe this is why I've had to add Pepcid AC - 100 count box, to my grocery list.


Saturday, January 15, 2011

what day is it?

The day after New Years I packed up Christmas tightly and put it away until next year. I proudly set up my Mardi Gras decorations and once again had to remind people what exactly Mardi Gras means.

I always get the typical.....What is boobs and Bourbon Street Alec, for $800?

Sorry stupid, that's not the right answer, try again next year or just google it!

The kids returned to school on a Tuesday and the craziness began to circle all around us again. I fired up the printer downstairs and started to print my syllabus's and schedules for my upcoming semester. Life had returned to normal after a peaceful 2 weeks off for Christmas break.

Sometime on Thursday right when I was embracing the whirlwind that is my life, we heard the first talk about SNOW yet again in Georgia. Yes, after being blessed with a VERY WHITE Christmas, we were apparently going to be blessed yet again. Over the weekend it was a mad dash to the store to stock up on supplies- milk, bread, brownies, cookies, beer,  you know the essentials to make everyday life bearable. I had my menu planned, and we were ready to bring on the snow. Sunday night it came through and wouldn't you know it we had a SNOW DAY on Monday, YIPPEE, for day 1!










Of course the red neck sledding began before the biscuits were even out of the oven, well at least only a little red neck sledding. A friend of ours picked up a toboggan thing for the kids to use. But of course the boogie and skim boards still made an appearance.
I found myself saying OVER AND OVER again, if you crack your head open on the pavement that is under the 6 INCHES of snow, I've got nothing but a band aid, neosporin and a prayer for you, sorry but the roads are CLOSED!
But fun was had by all in spite of my barks :)


 this is AWESOME!




 this is the elementary school by our house, what a FUN DAY!
 yes that's me, in all my gracefulness, I did have my band aid's handy!
 and that would be my child standing up going down a hill on a boogie board. Did I mention I had neosporin?
 my snow babies!



Snow day #2 came and it was very much like the first one. Sledding in unsafe conditions, snow flurries, wind burned cheeks, hot chocolate on tap and lots and lots of food. On the second day I took a ride with one of my neighbors to the store and,all though, the main roads had been plowed and looked like they were in good condition, the secondary roads were a snowy, icy mess. I told my neighbor, these kids are going to be out all week long.
And guess what blogging buddies, Tuesday turned into Wednesday, Wednesday into Thursday and Thursday into WHAT IN THE HELL DAY IS IT and why are all these kids in my house and by lord who left their snow covered boots on my hardwood floors AGAIN?!

The kids are off on Monday for MLK day and then it's back to school on Tuesday! I have thoroughly enjoyed an unexpected week off of the craziness. And I will thoroughly enjoy waving to the big yellow bus as it pulls away on Tuesday. The kids have a superstitious thing they do when hoping for a snow day around here. They wear the pj's backwards and flush an ice cube down the toilet. Well just to make sure Mother Nature or Old Man Winter know that we're done with snow days around here, I'm sleeping naked until summer and I have banned all flushing of toilets in my house before bed. If that doesn't scare the BEJESSUS out of the winter gods I don't know what else will!