Have/Haven't

I Haven’t

met one person who likes to fold laundry and put it away.
peed with the bathroom door closed since 2003.
ever liked my toes.
dropped an “f bomb” in a long time, but I did today (under my breath). I think the last time was June 08?
perfected my bedside manner at 3:45am.
ever voted for a democrat.
followed thru on an exercise regiment longer than a few weeks.
cared to try an adult beverage.
always been as patient as I thought I would be as a mom, but this job is TOUGH.
enjoyed changing the top bunks sheets, not even once.
figured out how my dog’s mind works, does she want in or out?

I Have

painted a picture.
met the current President and Vice President.
talked to myself for years.
thought the building I was in was going to blow up.
eaten an entire row of Ritz crackers in one sitting.
puked in a public restroom (food poisoning, not cool).
had to catch diarrhea in a diaper by a child not wearing one in the middle of an apple orchard.
been subpoenaed and testified in court.
called 9-1-1.
accidentally claimed to have bought something that actually came from Santa.
filed sexual harassment against a fellow employee – this total weirdo who would watch me put groceries in people’s trunks from his parked car in the parking lot (no, it wasn’t Erk :)

Poor Picky

Why am I so tired? Crazy how one weekend away and staying up quadruple your bedtime can do that to ya! With being tired, I’m trying to be patient with things like my dog barking at me to be a jerk and Jack feeding a big yellow tent pole down their register during quiet time, trying to get my attention. Quiet time is supposed to be peaceful! Mikie is quiet, he zonked out and Miss Mol did too.

Poor Mikie – I called the doc this morning and a nurse called back and said they’d need to do an ear check. While on the phone with the nurse, she said, “and with that cough, I’d say Jack needs to be checked as well.” Well, it wasn’t Jack coughing, it was BEAN whining and barking at me! Her and I laughed. Bean is sucha turd!

So we went at 11:15a and and Mikie felt like complete butt. He looked like it too. The nurse takes his temp and it’s 101.3. Finally, we go to the doc for a sick kid and they actually have a fever, imagine that. I think that’s the first time that’s happened (kinda like taking a car to a mechanic when it isn’t working right but it works fine for them). Then the doc comes in and looks in Mikie’s ear. He keeps looking, checks the other one and comes back to Mikie’s left. He says there is all kinds of “guk” in there. He decides to run a Strep test and wouldn’t you know? It came back positive! Never have we had a positive with that before! Then the doc tells me Mikie’s ear must have “blew” aka ruptured and there is so much stuff in there, he wants us to come back in a month to check the ear again. Poor Mikie – I could literally feel his pain! So we head out and grab a bite on the way home. I go to our pharmacy window, drop it off and am told 25 minutes. 25 minutes? FOR WHAT? Every time I go to fill amoxicillin, they literally fill it as I am sitting there after I have waited. So today, drop it off, wait in the parking lot. Finish our meals, wait. Molly crying, Mikie’s rash that was on his stomach that the doc first noticed has now moved up to his rosy cheeks. Pull into the line and wait, pull up, wait. I tell them his name and witness the freaking lady add freaking water to a bottle and mix it. It took 25 minutes to wait for her to do THAT? Ticks me off! My kid is bursting with an ear that kills, Molly is crying cause it’s past naptime and that’s what we waited for? WOW.

So we drive on home and head up for naps. Mikie went right down after some medicine and Mol was out. And like I said, Jack isn’t being so quiet. It’s hard though, playing in the same room as little bro sleeping. Maybe I’ll have him go in our room and take quiet time. But then he thinks it’s free tv time :) We’ll see…

Recoup

Good evening. I am sitting here just finishing up putting some names in Quickbooks from our recent orders over the productive weekend. We had 6 orders, did I tell you that? So we were very happy with that! I don't know exactly how this Quickbooks stuff works, but at least now all of our "vendors" and contacts are entered in. Erk will have to help me take it from there.

We had a good day - not great - simply cause the boys didn't feel good. Neither went to school today and with as much as I assumed (we know what that does!) Jack was slightly faking it, he really wasn't. He was kinda hyper this morning and I threatened to take him to school if he wasn't sick. Now why did I threaten him? Seems dumb. I want him to want to go to school, yet I threaten that he'll have to? Sheesh. Live and learn! Anywho, he continues that he doesn't feel good. This afternoon when he called me from the bathroom, I could see for myself that he wasn't making it up! Poor kid - he and Mikie both have diarehha (sp?) so bad. Mikie has had it a few days now and today he looked like a ghost walking around. He also cried tonight cause his ear hurt so bad, poor little dude :( Jack felt like poop (literally) at Granny and Grampa's and Granny said he mostly just moped around. Molly seems to be feeling better after her cough and all last week so that's good. We got home and I got the boys medicine and tucked Mol in and they were all out like a light within a few minutes.

Then I came downstairs and finished up bagging the nice orders from the weekend and here I sit. Erk wanted to go skiing tonight so that's where he headed. It sounded relaxing to him. Relaxing?? HA! But I guess scrapbooking doesn't sound relaxing to him, so I can understand :)

I hope you are having a good night. Please pray for Patti (aka Granny's) friend at work with a little boy, 3 1/2 with Neuroblastoma cancer. She told me about him tonight and then I recalled hearing about him before. They found out when he was 2. It doesn't look good. So that news, combined with Mikie crying cause his ear hurt so bad when we got in the truck (leaving Granny and Gramps) made me start crying. I felt so bad for Mikie cause I know the pain he's experiencing (umm, can you say IOWA?) and then this poor, helpless child. Flashbacks to Laura. Man oh man.

Take care - sleep well - I'll hopefully plug in with ya tomorrow. Both boys will need another day to recoup I'm sure!

What a Weekend!

Shawna, Sally and I

I am home and I'd say the best word is exhausted! Pooped maybe better describes it? When I got in the car today to leave the retreat, it was like I sunk in my seat (nicely heated from "warming it up" while carrying out all my scrapbook goodies and luggage) and just became a slab of meat with mittens (Planes, Trains and Automobiles). The weekend was AWESOME and I know I use the word a lot, but it was. It was so fun, great to meet new people, network and get some more pages done.

Friday night didn't prove to bring much time to scrapbook, but we got settled in and talked to people. We went to bed at a decent time that night which was a good move, knowing Saturday was really the "meat" of it all. Saturday we got a lot done and the time flew by. Saturday night we scrapped til 1:30a and didn't get to bed til 2! I am NEVER up that late. Felt like sucha rebel :) We slept in until about 9a this morning which was nice too, then we got up and ready and headed to the great breakfast (the meals are so good). Then to finish today out with lots of orders and more chatting it up with great women. Somewhere along the way we ran into not one, not two, but THREE different issues with our website, which were all VERY frustrating, but in the whole scheme of things, not huge deals. It seems as though when we need the site, it won't work right, but otherwise it works fine. What the beak is up with that??? First it was a lady who placed an order of 19 pages and only 11 went thru... then it was a credit card that wouldn't be accepted... then it was a password that couldn't be recovered. Sheesh! Makes us feel frustrated on the inside, but having to grin and bear it on the outside, feeling we come across like IDIOTS cause we've "plugged" the site all weekend and it doesn't freaking work! Argh. But so it goes. We still came away with 6 orders sitting in our info box and more to come. What a wonderful thing!

As I started out saying, getting in the car made me into a big blob, but not too long after, there was not blob Ernie, but shaking, fearful Ernie. Shawna and I were planning to pull into a Subway along the way to grab lunch before heading home. We drove seperate cause I got there early to put out our products around the scrap retreat and she had a doc appt that fell in a bad time, but she needed to go for some relief for her bad back that's been crappy for 2 weeks now. So we pull into Burger King instead cause we can't find a Subway and she goes thru the drive thru before me. We pull out and head on our journey home. She was a ways ahead of me as we got going, but I was eating my chicken sandwich and taking it a tad slow cause I just don't feel overly confident driving Erk's car in the snow. So we're plugging along. I call Mom and Dad and leave a message that I'm heading home, had a great time... I say on Dad's voicemail "ohh, there's an accident, gotta go..." and I see brake lights and a Suburban on the shoulder. I quickly see the vehicle parked in front of it on the shoulder is Shawna. Her truck is all cracked on the front. I couldn't be too fast cause of the snow, but as quickly as I could, I pull onto the snow covered shoulder and throw the car in reverse and back up looking over my left shoulder the whole time as I'm going backwards in the snow on a highway where people are flying by at 70 MPH. I am saying repeatedly and worriedly, "Shawna! Shawna! Shawna!" and I get out and start to jog quickly to her passenger window.

"Are you ALRIGHT!?" I ask, shaking like a leaf, totally freaked by what just happened. Praise the Gracious Lord, she was alright. She had (fortunately I didn't see it happen cause I was too far behind) done a few 360's we are guessing, hitting at least 3 times on guard rails. Her truck was in bad shape. She was shaken, but handled it like a champ. I got in her truck's backseat, couldn't get in the front cause the door wouldn't open far enough. So I sit my butt on one of her boys' booster seats and I'm on the phone with 911. Having no real good sense of where we were, the 911 operator was very kind and helpful. As we sit there, we are getting more and more nervous about someone else doing the same thing and hitting us. So we decide to move off the highway. I get out and head to my car, having to wait a bit before traffic clears. It doesn't, so I have to climb in my passenger door, climb over the gear shifter and get a wedgie, then proceed to have Shawna follow me off what we think is an exit. Wouldn't you know it was a left exit! All we saw was the Exit 10 sign, didn't know it wasn't a regular exit, or that we'd have to exit to the left. So we "limp" so to speak with both of our cars hazards flashing, off the exit which only leads to another busy road. I call 911 back to tell them we moved and we end up pulling into someone's wide driveway so we aren't in harms way. We wait. I snap pictures of her car. We recall what happened again and again. We make phone calls. Shawna gets out to access the damage. I get a call from the 911 operator asking for our exact location cause the cop was in the area but couldn't find us. She soon thereafter pulled up, nice as can be, wrote the report and called a wrecker for us. He shows in no time with a lady following him who had just basically done the same thing as Shawna in her truck. Wrecker guy has to call in a flat bed truck cause Shawna's truck is 4 wheel drive. But we moved all of her stuff in with me and headed for home. Shakin' and driving very causiously, we made it home. Thank you Lord for bringing us home safe and sound. I just hope you are alright, Shawna. How is your back? I hope you don't wake up sore. We praise God too for having us drive seperate. Who's to say what could have, would have happened in another situation. Thank you Lord!

Quick HI

Hey everybody! Sitting here still in my own little world of scrapbook central. This weekend goes by WAY too fast! I found that before I knew it last night, it was 1:30am and my eyes hanging out of my head! I never stay up that late! It's been a real blessing to be here - not even getting a million scrapbook pages done, but meeting new people and laughing and eating REALLY good food.

I'll check in with ya'll later. Off to order some fun scrapbook stuff with the $25 coupon I got when I got here :)

Kick in the Pants

Today is just, well one of those days. Seems nothing is going the way I’d like, I’m being disrespected, talked back to, kicked in the face (literally) and I’m just done right now. Perhaps after getting this off my chest, I’ll feel better.

For starters, I still have no cell phone. Which means I have no phone here at home (we have no land line). I feel naked. I feel like something is gone and I have no control. What if I need to call 9-1-1? Can’t. I’ll have to run ½ mile to a neighbor’s house for help while I'm bleeding to death I guess. What if my truck breaks down with all 3 kids? Too bad, put on your walkin’ shoes, baby. Fortunately, neither happened, but it still crossed my mind. Not to mention if I’ve missed calls regarding the retreat, things that I need to handle, etc...

Then let’s move on to the fact that I am tired. Shawna and I got a lot done last night, glad it’s done and I don’t have to mess with it today. But I got home and Erk is snoring. He can’t help it, but let’s face it, even if you are exhausted, it’s not easy to fall asleep when the shingles are snapping off your roof. I finally conk and I’ve got the pee sheets that need to be changed (not mine, read below). Then 5:52am wake up call from Molly. Then up at 7:27a to hop in the shower, get talked back to, Mikie freaking out cause of the teeniest tiniest cut on his knee that you’d think his leg had been amputated. He was screaming in the shower! Get a bandade on, but being at the knee and he walks, umm it won’t stay on. He gets hysterical. I hear him up in their room getting dressed acting like the leg was sawed off. I ignore it and try to get something makeup wise on my face cause we have to head out and I’ve looked rather dead lately.

Molly gets up, she’s crying all morning wanting “MoMMA!” to hold her all freaking day. Well, I can’t. I am trying to clean pee sheets, get breakfast on the table (which Molly dumped her bowl of cereal out in one fail swoop of her hand) and then I just wanna run to a nearby printer that did some work for our website. Friends of Mom and Dad, they own a printing company that may be able to offer something that would allow us more variety in our digital scrapbook page quality. So we head out. Mikie is telling me as we pass every house that “I could shovel their driveway, and theirs, and that one…” and Jack is “ohh really, you think I need to get my coat on!” attitude and Mol is continuing to fuss. We get to the print shop and with the snow and all, the parking spot I had available was super small so I cleaned another van off with my coat and had to fold my mirror in so I wouldn’t hit Molly’s head on it. Boys are pretty well behaved in there, but Mol is opening doors that say “Employees Only” and I’m trying to focus on what they are telling me. The work they did on 2 particular prints is AMAZING, I wish we could do it – but for now? Too expensive for us. They suggested buying a machine like they have, but our bank acct doesn’t quite have that much moola in it.

Walking out proud of what I have to show Shawna, balancing the sample pages they gave me along with the “gold” set of pages which is rolled up (this is the piece I liked best). Mikie is dinking around and whips that roll of “gold” right outta my hand and into a snowbank. I was PISSED. So I have to pick it up, dust off what I can and clean that van again with my coat to get Molly in her car seat, I’m starting to yell at Mikie who still is totally oblivious to the whole thing. I frantically try to swipe the snow off with my scarf (that Mikie was wearing, he is one rare dude) and I’m ticked. So I lay it out to dry and explain the importance of what he just knocked into the snowbank. As we drive away, I’m realizing I am just underneath yanked that my new phone hasn’t arrived (I was told it’d be yesterday) and that my email wasn’t working this morning and I was just, well, naked without outside contact.

From there we head to grocery shop. Not necessarily huge groceries, but enuf to help us get thru. We run into 4 different people we know there, all very nice folks, and I’m putting on my best front to seem not-so-irritable, but I am. The boys are begging for a cookie so I tell them only if they are good and ya know, they were pretty good. Til we got the cookie and then it all went downhill. They were fighting at the checkout about a freaking winter hat and one of Jack’s little classmates walks by and waves, then proceeds to come talk. The mom is a sweet lady and her son (Ethan) is the nicest boy. She starts apologizing to me, figuring I’d know what for. Then she leans in and tells me that Ethan told Jack that “he was gonna kill him” at school the other day. Nice! I hadn’t heard, but with 5 year olds, can ya expect anything less? Ethan’s mom felt terrible, but I’m thinking, man, if you only knew my kid has pinched, spit, kicked the kitchen, said the word rhyming with mit, etc, this is really no biggie!

So we go from there to load the truck, Jack is screwing around ticking Mikie off, I’m trying to buckle Molly and then hand her a toy that fell to the floor and her little white Stride Rite shoe kicks me right in the forehead. Nice. If you know me, I don’t respond well to being scared or hurt. I was not happy, but proceeded to load the groceries. On the way home, Mikie is asking non-stop questions and Jacks asks, “Mom, why does Mikie always say such big numbers?” (like 400million hundred) and I thought a minute and responded, “cause he’s four.”

We get home and Mikie keeps telling me how thirsty he is, I have bags loaded on both arms so I can cut down my number of trips in and out, Molly is waiting for me to come in and shows such excitement every time I do, Jack is asking where lunch is… I finally ask the boys if I was just sitting around doing nothing? They quickly got my drift that I was GETTING THERE. We eat, the mess is still lingering but I needed to step away and take a breather. I’m tired, yes. I’m ornery, yes. I’m probably needing a kick in the pants, yes. But for now? I just wanna shut my eyes and tune out the yelling that is now happening during quiet time in the boys’ room. ARGHHHH, I guess I’d better go up and handle it…

Outta Bed

Good morning! It looks to be a beautiful morning out there, although I see schools are delayed. No school for us today anyways, so no biggie. We are going to head a few places this morning and get our small grocery list outta the way, then come on home to hang. Shawna and I had a late night doing some retreat prep (tying over 100 notecard packs to envelopes with pretty ribbon) and other good stuff so I had an issue getting outta bed this morning. I usually try to get up with Erk, but today? Couldn't swing it. Molly was crying in her crib at 5:52am and finally quit (good deal cause I thought my day was gonna start then) and in the middle of the night, Jack had an accident that I had to attend to (taking sheets off a top bunk in the dark is NOT easy), so... I'm pooped. But laying in bed that extra 1/2 hour sure did me some good. And I was even able to take a shower with Molly still asleep so I had some privacy and no toothpaste/combs/barretts/makeup/lotion to pick up when I was done!

Yesterday Mikie comes to me and says, "Mom, did you know the pencil can even write on the WALL!?" all proud of himself. The look on his face changed when he saw my face wasn't too excited!