Snap Shots

In you come, arm over your eyes
("...all the better for you not to see me, Mother") with a
Blues Clues (hand-me-down) summer cap throwing
a dark shadow over most of your face.

Your little hands are carefully removing small
bits and pieces from my computer desk.

I know you're there dear.

I know it painfully because in this precious, gorgeous Kodak moment I am cursing the fact that my camera is in the kitchen.

The Oldest Son...

... has a job!! Did you hear me cheer?
The 3-week long application process has finally paid off and the kid starts work at the hospital in June.

YaaaaHoooooo!

oh, and if you haven't already,
convince me to be your New Moon popcorn pal (post below).

Now We're Talkin!

I have an idea...

a contest of sorts....

only, I'm the winner of it.

See this?
Remember how last time I sat here wishing a meteor would hit my house while all of you were lining up with your shiny Twilight tickets? Envy is an ugly emotion.

Yeah, well not this time peeps.

I don't care if it's nearly Turkey Day,
I don't care if traveling just before Christmas sucks
the precious funds from the kids' stocking loot,

I'M NOT MISSING THIS ONE.

So here's the contest:

Convince me why I should fly to YOUR part of the country to see it with you.

That's it, that's the contest. Your prize is my bubbling, always-optimistic-sunshiny self in a theater seat next to you to see New Moon.

ok, fine. How about a goody package? Filled with fun?

Now for contest rules and disclaimers (in teeny tiny print and read really fast by a voice you can't understand):

You must comment to be entered. You can comment as many times as you wish, but since I can't even keep up with the whereabouts of a two-year old, I can't be bothered to keep track of how many times you commented. You will be counted as one.

Your name will be picked randomly by a highly sophisticated system you have come to expect from my highly sophisticated blog.

Seriously, don't pull out the air mattress for me because: A) I hardly know you, but I am sleeping in your bed, not on the floor--ok, that's just a joke, I have my own places to stay.
B) I haven't run ANY of this past the Hubby so truth is, this may just be for giggles.

BUT you WILL get a goody box from me. I don't have to get his ok for that, I'm the boss of me.

Some of the things in there:

There was a third box until somebody (that was supposed to be in bed sleeping)
crept into my room, opened it and put all of the candies in her play tea pot.

Maybe I will include a UK edition of New Moon. Or maybe I'll just moon you from the U.K.
Ok, now it's just getting silly (I need sleep).


Why are you still reading? Shouldn't you be gathering tourist information packs about now?

One Day I will Laugh

But today is not that day...

Miss Ky is tired. As a compromise to napping demands, I agree to let her lie in my bed. I figure I can get in a little reading.

"I need to use the toilet"
"Oh, really? Ok, need my help?"

"No, I do it myself"

I hear the toilet being used. Then quiet.

"Ky, what are you doing?"

"I havta wash my hands"

"Oh, ok, hurry up please" (because time with water is not good)

silence.

then the pitter patter of feet on carpet.

"Ky, what are you doing?"
"I havta get new underwearpants".

"Oh, ok. Can I help?"
"No, I do it myself".

Pitter patter back to the bathroom.
silence
pitter patter back out of the bathroom
silence.

whimper

"Ky?!"
"I can't do it!"

I find her standing in her room attempting to put a second shirt on.
It's funny, I laugh and help her.

Then I go into my bathroom....
and shouted at Miss KY to get into her bed, NOW.

My toothbrush, my sink, my carpet and my bath mat all have Desitin all over them. There are white Desitin footprints leading out of my bathroom.

One day I will laugh but right now, if someone doesn't come get this child....

...Pause for a Station Identification Break

They look so innocent when they're not breaking picture frames and shredding wall paper

Did You Hear That?

You know that intuition thing?

Others call it a still, small voice. A quiet prompting.

Has it been telling you to call or visit someone or send a letter?

Tonight I wasn't quite holding it together. To say that we had had an emotional day would have been an understatement. I was watching the clock until bedtime...
like bedtime ever really stops the insanity in my house.

8.30 Woo Hoo! I turned on a recorded "Britain's Got Talent" to lift my spirits. I watched a grandfather and granddaughter sing and the thought of them together on a stage made me tear up. Why don't I have a grandfather? This sweet musical pairing falling on the heels of a really good pity party the other night-- me watching "Dan in Real Life" again and wondering why I couldn't be born to a family that did things together.

Then A2 appears (one of the children on my "lucky to still be living" list) to tell me that Miss Ky, who is no longer in her bed, has a poo and she's pulled off another great strip of wallpaper.

It was the permanent crippling of that straw-bearing camel.

Ok, in print, it doesn't sound like such a big deal, but believe me there's so much I can't write on here that I am facing daily and an after-bedtime stink and torn paper can throw me over. I cried. I swatted a little home destroyer and then sat down in my computer room and sobbed.

I pleaded, "Do you hate me so much? Could I possibly take anymore?" when I thought I heard a knock.

...there it was again, definitely a knock.

Great. The neighbors must have heard me shout and have come to save the children. Mascara is all over my face, so I cower in my computer room. Another knock.

I did open the door finally. My Branch President (Pastor) and his wife have brought cake and hot chocolate.
He explained that he left his house at 6 am and other than a fifteen minute stint around 4, had not been home the whole day. When he did get home, he felt very strongly that he needed to come by--"NOW", as he put it.

They stayed for two hours. She changed Miss Ky's stinky diaper and read her a story. She convinced the other kids to get in bed with promises that there would be cake for them tomorrow. She showed them the love and affection where my account was overdrawn.
He counseled with me.
Ok, he sat and I cried and vented, but he validated my feelings, and it was all done with NO CHILDREN climbing on me at the time.

So I ask again.

Is there someone that's been on your mind lately? It's not coincidence you know. Get off the computer and give them a ring.


ahem...you're still here...

Husband's Less-than-perfect Timing

Not aware that his wife would be conjuring up nightmares killing him off,
last week the hubby packed up a "care package" for the family.

In it was books he's enjoyed (for me to read in all that spare time I have--one begins with a dog lying on a lawn with a pitchfork sticking out of it),
some REAL maple syrup from Vermont (too bad I didn't know it was coming and we had a pancake dinner just a few nights before the box arrived), books for the kids, candy (a speed eating record was set by four awfully small people who must have flip-top heads to be able to consume so much so fast) and a stuffed bear for the princess.

Oh, and he also does dvds of him reading books that the kids can read along with. The last deployment he read Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit or something like that, but this time he's reading books geared more towards A2 (6 year old).

However,
on this new dvd included in our package, he was kind enough to record something he was able to do over in Iraq.


In a war zone.



It's his HELICOPTER ride he took to see the countryside.



Yeah.

Dear Hubby,
Your timing, as ever, was impeccable.
I'm avoiding the mental assessments that may get you an early
ticket out of there but could result in your premature death.
SO, your part of the deal is to avoid anything that may appear "fun".
Thank you.
Oh, and thank you for the giant tootsie roll.

Off Balanced...

... or off kilter, out of whack-- whichever term you like to use. Today is one of those days that I can't get focused and it's those days Miss Ky is at her best (hear the sarcasm?).

She's dialed people on the phone, eaten three bags of chips she snuck out of the pantry, poured an entire bottle of syrup on the table (I said a prayer of thanks that it was only on the table) and changed clothes 4 times. There was also the cup she filled with "candy". As I inspected it, each SweeTart-looking disc had the word "Tums" imprinted on it.

When helping me put whites in the washer, she stuck a deep-purple sock in the load when my back was turned as I spot treated the Cheetos smear on her Gymboree shirt (another prayer that I saw it before I started the load).

The phone has been ringing because of an elderly lady in our church that's just been hospitalized (swine flu? No, pneumonia), so that's why the little stinker is running rampant.
Last night when I was on the phone she dragged a stool to the refrigerator and stood on top of it to reach the bottle of vitamins I keep up "out of reach". Ok, so now it's only out of my reach-- there are no limits for her.

But the way the day began has really thrown me.

You know how you can train yourself to realize that a dream is just a dream-- it's like reaching a mental maturity to have control like that, and I am SO not there.
Last night I dreamed that I was absolutely unable to get through another month of deployment. After being assessed by mental health officials (not so far off base is this one, huh?), they determined the hubby should come home.
It just so happened (in the dream) that a news crew was doing a story on the base he's stationed at and I was able to see from here, on my very own TV, my Hubby climbing into a helicopter that I knew would take him to an airport to come home.
I watched excitedly in anticipation, when suddenly, to my horror the news crew captured an incoming missile as it hit that helicopter. The entire thing exploded right before my eyes.
I screamed.

wow, that was hard even typing that, and it didn't even really happen.

Several times I kept thinking, "Maybe this will just be a dream" but I never quite made it out the other end. In fact, I convinced myself it wasn't a dream since I had lived through telling the kids and his parents...the funeral, the nightmare that comes with the death of a spouse.

So another prayer this morning-- that my worst nightmare was only just that.

And while I tried to share this intimate portrait of my day, Miss Ky has opened and disposed an entire box of plasters (band-aids). Only 5 hours till bedtime... which doesn't bring a lot of comfort considering....


Hubby's photo.

Old Mother Hubbard

My house was out of chocolate.

I know I know, impossible, but true.

and I got a little desperate

and a little snippy (ok, a LOT snippy).


While my mother was visiting, I brought in all of my best chocolate bars for her to try... and then ate them. all. I did let her try them. a little.

I was digging through every hiding place and the best I could find was a Cadbury's Freddo bar that I had pinched out of the kids' Easter basket.

Quite a disappointment after three weeks of a gourmet chocolate coma.

So today while thinking I was going to have to drink a gallon of ovaltine to fix my craving, I suddenly remembered Mikki.

Mikki had a giveaway a while back and all you had to do to win a fabulous goodie box was to reveal previously undisclosed quirks about yourself.

We all know I have NO shame, so I inundated her email with things one needs never know about moi. It was fun. Since you didn't ask, the random fact that won was:"Fact: I like Steve. I never liked Joe."

But the fun really began when she told me that a box was coming my way!

It arrived during the mother-visit chaos and was tucked away in a safe place for proper photos to be taken-- thus my very rude and delayed response in posting about it.

Can you believe the gold mine in here? How fun is this?

THANK YOU MIKKI!

That's chocolate in there among the pretty cards, stationary, quirky salt and pepper shakers for our BBQ table and other cute things.

This was the last time J2 was able to use his right hand as he reached for my chocolate.
Silly boy, he's 10, he should know by now NEVER to reach for a woman's chocolate. Living dangerously.

So crisis over, the world is rosy again.

I'm thinking I need to load up on my chocolate--in the interest of doing a post about chocolate, of course.

Just looking out for you, as always.

Julio Iglesias Wanted Me to Sing!

To all the Moms I've loved before

Who travelled in through my blog door
I'm glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the Moms I've loved before


To all the Moms I once distressed
may I just say I've passed the test?
For helping me to grow
I owe a lot I know
To all the Moms I've loved before


The whinge of change here is always blowing
And every time I try to stay
The whinge and complaints continue blowing
But the Moms love me anyway


To all the Moms who share my life
Through blogs, emails & Facebook hype
I'm glad YOU came along
I dedicate this song
To all the Moms I've loved before...

Happy Mother's Day!

I know, stick to changing diapers.

There's a great blogger out there who temporarily lost his good sense and invited me to his Sunday Roast. Please drop by Authorblog if you have a minute because I'm really hoping to boost his readership. I crack myself up, actually, his blog is pretty wonderful-- 774 followers can't be wrong. Thank you, David.

When People Let You Down

You can tell who your good friends are.

Apparently I have gone years without any, let me prove it:

Who in their right mind would let me out of the house wearing halloween socks and still call themselves "friend"?

A real friend would've said, "I know you think you're hot because thirty pounds of baby has been taken from your tummy, but girl, you are NOT hot and you need to burn those shorts with the socks".

A few years later, the good friend might've said, "You're not fooling anybody hiding in the Hubby clothes, we know you're 20 pounds heavier than when you got pregnant, so for Pete's sake, go buy some clothes that fit!"




"Oh good grief, again with the socks?"
"Didn't I tell you to burn those shorts?"


(ok, that pregnancy I actually had some pretty nice clothes that required lovely high-heeled boots, but it was just me and the kids playing in the back yard...um, yeah)

"Just because your kids like to dress goofy, doesn't mean you have to as well."

"A Walkie Talkie? Attached to your trousers? Seriously?"

"...are you wearing socks with that outfit?"


And the pictures I didn't include?

Because believe it or not, I do have some self-respect left.

"Until your arms are again smaller than your thighs, you should keep them down."


"NEVER, ever follow the trend if peg leg jeans come back in."

and back to Exhibit "A":

"Oh honey, never pose with skinny, stylish people when you are sporting the Cleopatra look".

When You ask Yourself, Can It Get Any Worse?

Today there are cinders where my eyes have burned holes with looks only a frustrated mother can give. The walls have paint chipping from where my shouts have ricocheted. And today when I finally found an hour to change my oil? It rained.

And the boys didn't watch their sister but instead let her wreak havoc on the ONLY room I managed to salvage from yesterday's pillage.
I only knew she wasn't being watched when she came outside in slippers to see that I still hadn't managed to get the oil filter off.

In the rain.

We don't have a filter tool.

Nope, the Hubby does it by hand. Isn't that sweet?

Only his stinking hand isn't here and my hands don't have that much torque when angled up from the underneath of a car.

I read somewhere that no one reads blogs on the weekend, so I'm assuming it's ok to say
I am pissed off at the Air Force right now. Hmmm, "pissed" here means drunk, and I'm not that.

musica

It's been 112 days since the Hubby deployed.

We don't really count days though, since the Air Force doesn't. They don't care that he got on a plane one day of the week and didn't make it to his destination for many days later. They only care about the guy who will replace him and when he will be capable of stepping into my husband's place-- at this stage, we're too far out to even contemplate that time. It's too far out to plan any holiday or time away together when he returns.

I've only just realized that as we're settling into our new house, we're settling in without him. He doesn't have a stamp on it--in any room. I've completely taken over the bed...
well, me and a wandering toddler have taken over the bed.

The other day his side of the closet was opened for something (maybe his Norwich City football shirt that I pinched) and stood open all day. It was weird seeing all of his clothes and shoes just sitting there. Haunting. But,

I'm slowly bleeding into that space too.

He misses a lot of things being deployed and with this desert holiday he'll miss three birthdays. The one he won't miss (but still will because we live so far away) will be J1's.


Our oldest will turn 21 in August.

Have I told you he is an amazing musician? (The kid, not the Hubby--he CAN play a mean trumpet, but his passions are geek computers).
I don't think it's just a mother's appreciation either-- the kid can play numerous instruments and he's recorded a full cd (with him playing all of the parts, vocals and doing the mixing).

This mother knows that the vocals are not her son's strongest attribute. However...

He recently sent me 3 new songs and I was floored. Seriously. I sat there in disbelief that this was done entirely by him. The songs were terrific and his brothers and I were singing along after only two cycles through the ipod. They are the kind of songs that you can hear once and like. Hear it the second time and it's stuck in your head and you find yourself humming the chorus in the grocery store.

Last year for J1's birthday, I arranged for one our favourite authors to dedicate a book to him. He was so surprised (and carried the book around to the point that it won't be worth anything to anybody but him and I now). I'm glad he loves it so much. (Bill Bryson-- since the odds are so high that you lurk around my blog on a regular basis, can I just say "thank you" again? You really were very kind).

Now, for this milestone birthday, I want to get these 3 latest songs heard. Just heard. Not signed, bought, lauded by every DJ in radio world or recorded by Blink 182 (well, maybe THAT would be cool--Mark Hoppas are you lurking too?)

Any suggestions?

Any dreams you now wish you had pursued when you were still young and snappy?

Can you believe it's been 116 days?

Surely you have an answer for at least one of these questions.

Below you can hear a snippet of one of the songs (terrible editing by me) SONG COPYRIGHT 2009

Sometimes You Can Be A Little Too At Good Keeping a Secret

Call it inspiration, or call me a thief, Tom-ay-toe, Tom-ah-toe. I get my ideas from other bloggers. A while back, Karen over at The Rocking Pony was telling "Secret Admirer" stories from 7th grade and it reminded me of an incident I experienced in high school.

We've discussed before how I have never been Michelle Pfeiffer pretty. How my husband had to be accosted by two drunk women playing cupid to even notice me, so I guess with my horse face I should consider myself lucky that I grew up in a small town (that at one time had, according to Paul Harvey, the highest divorce rate per capita) where the percentage of men to women was in my favor.

Always the bride, never the beauty queen....



It was the last day of school. The day when everyone cleaned out the locker mess that they had called home for the year. I was chattering happily as I pulled out notebooks, gum wrappers and old library notices from my locker when something fell to my feet.

That careful, over-thought fold and the blue-lined paper told me that this was an important unearthed artifact. A note I must've saved because of it's importance.

Only when I opened it and read it, I realized that I had never seen it before. (No, I didn't have my memory issues then, I was a sharp as a bowling ball, thankyouverymuch)

It was a confession. A love letter from someone who had been too shy to approach me in person. He gave some clues to who is was...


but I didn't get them.


It was the last day! When was this put in my locker? I didn't have any days left to watch people around me to figure it out!

I spent the summer wondering, "Was it him? or him? HE looked at me kind of funny one day..."

Finally, those thoughts morphed into, "You mean all of those friday nights that I was home alone and wondering if I'd be single forever, someone LIKED me and my locker was too messy for me to know it?"

Miss Ky is going to keep the cleanest locker ever, even if I have to do it for her. Do you think that's too much? And Secret Admirer, I'm sorry. You really should've tacked it to my forehead.

Do You Want the Bad News First?

Norwich lost.
Not only did they lose, but they lost pitifully and are now relegated.
This probably means nothing to you, but it did ignite some interesting dinner conversation.

(A1 is 9 and A2 is newly 6)

A1: I'm going to buy a Ford when I'm like 25. If I'm a footballer, I will make like £200,000 pounds very game...

the most interesting part of this is that I have a Ford and have no shame sharing my dislike for it at all times.

A2: I'm going to buy an Audi A4, like the one I saw at Tesco and be a football manager.

Me: Good, you can manage Norwich back into the Championship.

A1: If I were a manager A2 might fire me.
When I become a football player, I am coming to England to play for Norwich or Arsenal or Man U and I'll make like 8 million pounds a year so I can buy a Lamborghini and a Ferrari.

you forgot the bit where you'll take really good care of your Mom, mate.

Look Norwich, you have nothing to lose. I think it's time you get creative and start buying some decent players. Give me a ring, we're here between midnight and 6 am...

and speaking of rings,

Dear Hubby,

My wedding ring has lost two diamonds. I blame the Air Force. If you had been here, I wouldn't have been using my hands like man hands.
I'm also holding them responsible for my additional weight gain, premature gray and the sunburn I got from standing out all day watching kids play in football tournaments (and no, the two hours after playing at the beach had NOTHING to do with my nice tomatoey complexion).

The good news is,

I survived my first Sunday as RS Pres.
Again, that probably means nothing to most of you....

PSF In An Alternate World

This is me.

Living on my art (and the generosity of strangers who don't know the difference between a painterly piece and couch art).

It's me, smiling at the ridiculous comments (by people who think I must be hearing impaired the way they speak about me as if I'm not there).

OK, it's not really me, but it might have been.

I've always been torn between two worlds: The artist that graduated with honors and desired to go to Ann Arbor to complete a Master's and the mother who wanted to fill her world with the love of her happy children.

When I go to London, I want to absorb everything. The street sounds (what is it like to live in such an alive city?), the smells and the art--musicians playing in the tube station and artists creating work others can walk on.

This woman was just outside the National Gallery (home to works by Carravaggio, Titian, Degas, Van Gogh, Van Eyck...). I hovered a little longer than most passerbys and it wasn't to stare at her chalk drawing, but instead to inhale the essence of what must be her life.

I wonder if when she looked at me, the woman with mini humans-- chattering satellites--revolving around her and contemplated a path not taken...

yeah, probably not.


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