My layouts this week
created with Tell Me a Story by Traci Reed & Heather Roselli at Sweet Shoppe Designs
one of my Learn Something New layouts, created with Scary Moon Cat by Lauren Grier at SSD
another Learn Something New layout,created with Winter Chic by Shabby Princess at ShabbyPrincess.com
Some layouts I did this week
This was done with Heart of Fall by Traci Reed & Kay Miller at Sweet Shoppe Designs
This was made with Mischief & Mayhem by Heather Roselli, also at SSD. This was for the Learn Something New class I am taking
This was done with Bestest of Friends- Boys by Eva Kipler at SSD
You Are 70% Real |
 You know who you are, and you're pretty darn comfortable with yourself. Like everyone, you struggle with the parts of yourself that aren't so great... But you're good at accepting who you are and not dwelling on your faults. As a result, you're confident, optimistic, and very real. |
You can find it here
http://www.crayola.com/promos/64boxBirthday/colorQuizzer.cfm
I missed 12 colors
Your Common Spelling Mistake Score: 60% Correct |
 Your spelling is decent, but you do make quite a few mistakes. Let's just say you won't be winning a spelling bee anytime soon! |
Mayhem is just full of ideas - ideas of things for other people to do. Most of Havoc & Mayhem's play is Mayhem directed, in theory. Havoc may come up with the idea - "Lets build a tent with blankets" but Mayhem quickly takes over with suggestions about which blankets, where to put them in the living room, how to arrange them and what toys to take into the tent. Havoc, like any good cubical worker, looks like he is listening and then goes and does what he was intending to do anyway & then explains away any discrepancies in the final project by persuading Mayhem they were actually his idea. So it works out.
Mayhem thinks I should be more of a traditional mom. I assume this from the projects he comes up with for me to do. He is full of ideas of what I should be baking. "You should make these muffins today Mama. Then these tomorrow and then these. Then maybe you can make these for when we go camping." Mayhem's favorite book is
He pages through this thing every day and brings it to me with ideas. "These muffins look good, why you not make them? When we have these muffins for dinner?" He sounds just like my old boss bringing me articles from trade publications and asking me why we aren't using this software (um, because the company is too cheap to pay for it and the training necessary or better yet, it has NOTHING to do with my job). I wouldn't mind so much, but like managers who ask for reports and then never look at them, Mayhem rarely eats the muffins he asks me to make.
When he isn't bossing me around making helpful suggestions in the kitchen, he gets out his other favorite book
and suggests things I ought to be crocheting. He does play with the toys at least. I just finished this penguin at his request.
I'm working on an octopus for Havoc right now, then Mayhem thinks I should make the owl, then the dog, then maybe the monkey, then another dinosaur.
I'm not letting this kid know about my quilting books.
SSD quiz for FOBTY
| You Were the Arty Kid |
 You're probably a little less weird these days - but even more talented! |
But I really wasnt'. I'm not even sure what an emo poet is.
for SSD FOBTY challenge
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. | |
| The West | |
| Boston | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The Inland North | |
| The Northeast | |
| North Central | |
| The South | |
| What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz | |
Sweetheart,
Today is your first day of kindergarten. You've been looking forward to it. We met your teacher and saw your classroom 2 days ago. You told me she seemed nice and you couldn't wait to play with all the things in your class room. You were very excited about getting to ride on the bus this morning and when it finally came you climbed on with a quick goodbye and hardly a backward glance. My little man! So grown up already.
I'm glad you are so eager & so positive about this experience. I want this to be a happy time,something you look back on with fondness, but being Mom, I worry. I'll always worry about you. That's my job.
Starting today you will now spend more time with others than you do with me and I worry. Will they be kind to you? Will they understand you? Will they patient? Will you make friends? Will they be good friends? What sort of friend will you be? Which of the myriad of influences you will be exposed to, will you pick up? Have I taught you the interpersonal skills you need to make friends and to cope in strange & new situations? Have I provided the best example of kindness, tolerance & understanding?
I want to be there to hold your hand as you walk to your classroom. I want to be a friendly & familiar face in new and unfamiliar environment. I want to help & encourage you when you meet your new classmates. I want to assist you to interpret & filter the things being said & done around you. I want to hold you and never let you go. You are leaving me & going out into the world, which is what you are supposed to do & what I want you to do. But it is so hard letting go.
You are a sensitive soul. You want to help. You are good with smaller kids & assisting people who need it. But you are fragile sometimes. You can be hurt so easily by a mean word. You are strong and you are sure of yourself too, so the pain doesn't usually last long. You have it in you to be a leader & encourage others. You are smart & pick things up quickly. You are good & kind person. I am proud of you
I hope your teacher can help you learn to focus your energy on your classes. I hope she has better luck that I did. I hope you make good and lasting friends this year. I hope you become an even better person than you already are. I hope this year fulfills the expectations you have for it today.
I love you with all my heart
Mom
I had done fairly well at sticking to a routine through June & most of July. I went to the gym 3 days a week. I had meals planned for 2 weeks at a time. I kept on top of grocery needs, sales and coupons. We went to the library once a week, had a reading plan and kept track of our books. The boys had a nice routine of running around, imaginative play, swimming, Wii, and TV/DVD watching. We had playdates. We even had a weekly craft thing going.
It all went to hell in mid-July. The humidity here was outrageous, keeping the kids inside & pushing off swimming until after 4pm. Or it rained all day. Having them underfoot all the time is distracting & left me with no time to keep up on the grocery lists & coupons. It was too hot to want to cook anything so the meal planning went out the window. My car a/c crapped out, and we don't have a garage, or anyplace continually shady to park a car. It was an oven. I didn't drive it anywhere I didn't have to go. Two weeks ago the library informed me I had 22 books checked out and I could have sworn it was only 9. The weather finally broke & it was comfortable. The kids could go outside again. Two days later Mayhem had his tonsils out and we have been housebound ever since.
Last night though Mayhem slept through the night, without once waking, screaming in pain. I'm going to optimistically take that to mean the worst of the healing process is over and perhaps we can now get back to some of our regular activities. Havoc starts school Wednesday and routine will be forced on us. I have decided that Sunday I will go through the freezer & the pantry & organize what I have. I will make lists of what I need. I will plan out meals - including Havoc's lunches. Monday morning the boys and I will go to the gym and I will attend my much neglected Body Pump class. Assuming I can still move after it, we will go grocery shopping. I will make lunch. I will make dinner. I will go back to getting off the computer at 7pm every day.
Normal life - it starts Monday. So I should probably get the odd stuff out of the way this weekend.
For From our Blog 2 yours at SSD
You know the movie
You have correctly answered 9 of 15 questions.
Considering I haven't seen it in almost 20 years that isn't too bad
or adenoids either, though I would have been hard pressed to point out his adenoids in any circumstances. I know what tonsils are. Adenoids? Those are those things they usually take out with your tonsils, leading me to believe they are related somehow. I do know they are the part mostly likely responsible for his speech problem, but where exactly they are located I can't say.
It went really well & despite my fears I had no time to be afraid. We got there the requiste 2 hours early, so we could have an hour and 40 minutes to sit around and wait. I can only assume the 2 hour early rule is so the hospital can make sure you really don't eat anything for at least those 2 hours before surgery. They can tell you "no food for 8 hours and no liquids for 4" but I'm willing to bet people don't follow that & that can cause trouble. If they make you be there 2 hours early they can ensure that small food & drinkless window.
Mayhem'd spent the trip to the hospital whining that he didn't want his tonsils out but the moment we arrived there, he led the way. He marched right up to the nurses station, chatted with them about his tonsils, asked them about their machines, and read the numbers on his blood pressure. He had apparently decided to have an outgoing day. They assigned us to a room we shared with another child who was just coming back from surgery when we arrived. He wasn't happy so we went to the play area.
They have a nice little play area in the pediatrics department & Mayhem was the only child in there the whole time we waited. We went in almost immediately after a little girl went for her surgery and a little boy came in right after we left, so I commend the hospital for their scheduling. Mayhem played with the trains and the big wheel and the bead tower and watched some fuzzy tv and was very well behaved.
He willing walked with me to the pre-op room, answered the nurses questions and asked some of his own. He only baulked when the OR door opened. "I not going in there!" he announced. They tried to interest him in the machines but he knew better. This was the serious room & he was not happy about it. He really didn't like the gas they gave him. He sat on my lap, spitting into the gas mask and saying "I not breathing! No big breaths!" He dropped off with a really annoyed look on his face. It was only as I put him on the table that the fear actually hit me. However the nurses, no doubt from long practice, immediately distracted me by telling me how to get to the waiting room and how to get to the cafeteria and there were so many lefts and rights and floor numbers to remember they completely overwhelmed the fear and it never came back.
The surgery went so fast DH & I barely had time to find the cafeteria, buy a couple hot dogs, find our way to the pediatric waiting room and eat the hot dogs before a nurse came in to tell us Mayhem was in recovery. It took less than 25 minutes & everything went fine. Apparently his tonsils were really huge.
He was cranky & groggy for about 30 minutes, after that you would never have known the kid had just had surgery. Granted he wasn't running around his hospital room & I had to lay in bed with him. But he talked as much as he usually does, he drank 3 glasses of icy juice and ate 3 popsicles and he played with the bedside tv. It was on this adjustable arm, bolted to the wall & he loved moving the tv around & up and down for optimum viewing pleasure.
When the nurses said we could leave, he immediately asked "We go to far away Target now and get my toy?" (The 'far away' Target is on the way to the hospital, the 'close by' Target is in the opposite direction from our house.) We had asked the nurse to call the prescriptions in to the far away Target anyway, since it was on the way home & we aren't familiar enough with the area around the hospital to find any nearby drug store. So we went to the far away Target and Mayhem thoroughly explored the toy aisles before deciding on, (sigh) more plastic dinosaurs. We bought him a milkshake from the ice shop and got ourselves some Quiznos subs. He fell asleep on the way home & woke up briefly for storytime & another dose of meds.
Today has been a cranky, low energy day for him. Most of spent laying on the sofa. He's had some ice cream, a couple spoons of pudding, a piece of American cheese, maybe half a glass of juice and a couple glasses of vanilla Carnation Instant Breakfast. He says he wants mac & cheese for dinner. We'll see how that goes. Havoc is going nuts because Mayhem won't play with him. I'm hoping when DH get home he'll take havoc outside & run some that energy off. It's driving me bonkers.
I've been working on these amigurumi dinosaurs since June. I'm fast enough crocheting the wider parts but I'm not so good when the circle is only 8 stitches around.
This is the brachiosaur and the stegosaurus I made.
The stegosaurus is my own pattern creation. I got the brachiosaur pattern from Claudia Vodermaier. My dino does not include the back ridges because I was informed by my 4 year old "Brachiosaurs don't have plates Mama!"
I'm going to remake both of them, with some adjustments, in pink and yellow for my nieces. The brachiosaur's neck will be a couple stitches wider & slightly shorter & his body a maybe a couple of stitches narrower, plus I'll include the ridges. The stegasaur will be bigger all over.
But first I have to make a triceratops
Today is my birthday! I am 41. 41 is a rather dull birthday year, coming right after the big 4-0 and before the Ultimate Answer (42). There really isn't much to say about it except - nope, no perimenopause yet.
However, exactly 20 years ago was my favorite birthday year, the year I turned 21. There is more background story to why my 21st birthday was my favorite than just the alcohol I was now allowed to consume. There is the drama of offers made and reneged on repeatedly in the years prior to my birthday. While drinking is the focus of the story, it was never really about the drinking. It was about the sheer irritation and annoyance of constantly having the metaphoric rug pulled out from under you.
The drinking age in West Virginia as of January 1985 was 18. Yes, that is right, 18. The nationwide push to raise the drinking age back up to 21 was gaining steam but my home state had been holding out. They made a token gesture though around April or so. The state government announced that as of July 1st you had to be 19 to buy alcohol, and they very kindly added a grandfather clause, if you were 18 by June 30, you could still drink. So anyone born before July 1, 1967 was legally allowed to purchase beer and liquor. I was born on July 20th. Missed it by *that* much. I, and everyone else born in the second half of 1967 were pissed. What made people born in June more responsible than us? That's just mean!
Not that the majority of us had any trouble getting alcohol when we wanted it. Unless you looked really young, you rarely got carded. I looked really young. It isn't that I wanted to drink specifically. Had I wanted a beer, there were some in the fridge at home I could have with my parents full permission. It was that something I regarded as a right was being taken from me.
So ok, fine, I'll wait a year. I'm a freshman at WVU, which then the #1 party school in the nation, obtaining alcholic beverages is not a problem. We had keggers and grape & grain parties in the dorm rooms and I was a pledge at AOTT, the number one party sorority on campus. Not drinking was a bigger problem actually.
Then word came down from above (the national government) to the state "You will raise your drinking age to 21 or we cut off your highway money." WV is a mountainous state. We need our federal highway money to keep the roads driveable. So the state legislature caved in and said on August 1st 1986, you will have to be 21 to buy alcohol. And they didn't grandfather it!!! There was no fine print reading "must be born on or before July 31, 1967" this time. You must be 21. Period.
What this meant for me was that I was legally allowed to drink for 11 days and then at midnight on the 12th day it was all over. I know people who stockpiled beer and wine coolers in those last couple of weeks of July because it would be 2 more years before they could get any. The new drinking age also brought more rigorous ID checking. So everyone who's fake ID said they were 19 now had to go get a new, better, more realistic ID that said they were 21. I got one. Not especially because I wanted to drink but social life was in bars and at frat parties & they now had to check your ID.
Honestly, I've never much cared for beer. I was more of a wine cooler girl. But bars never offered 25 cent wine cooler nights.
I was again irritated and annoyed by this change in the drinking age because one again I was being denied a right. Not only that, I was losing one I ALREADY HAD! It could have been the driving age, the voting age - it wouldn't have mattered. I would have been pissed at the way I was being yanked around for any of them.
Early in 1988 I began to be nervous. Were they going to do it again? Would they find some reason to raise the drinking age to 22 or 25 this time? Once again the carrot was being dangled in front of me. Would I at last be able to grab and keep it?
They left it alone. Finally! To celebrate my long awaited, lost and regained legality I had a tequila party. It might not sound like a big deal but for a bunch of people who's budgets usually ran to 25 cent draft night, buying bottles of Jose Cuervo was highly significant. We had shots, margaritas, tequila sunrises and something called a prickly pear that involved pineapple juice. We ate nachos, burritos, enchiladas, chimichangas, and quesidillas. It was a great party and my favorite birthday year ever.
So far.
I had a summer job all through my teen years. It was the same job, except for one memorable year.
When I was 13 I started working in the concession stand at the lake of a local park. We sold pop, pizza, hot dogs, popcorn, ice cream and crackers. We also rented out peddleboats and clubs for mini golf. During festivals and large gatherings I would spend hours making cotton candy. I was paid a whole $1.20 an hour that first year. I was earning a whopping $3.35 my last year there, when I was 19. There was a core group of us who were there every year and we had a lot of fun those summers.
When I was 18 I got a job at Walt Disney World for the summer. I sold ice cream at Epcot Center. It was the first time I had ever been really far away from home by myself. It was very exciting but I missed my friends back at the lake. They wrote me group letters and I sent them postcards (this was back before email & the internet).
The following year I was back at the lake for one last summer. We had a lot of parties that year.
After that my jobs lost their seasonality. The pizza restaurants, bars and retail shops I worked at in college are open year round & I had summer school, so I couldn't come home to work anymore.
My favorite place to go in the summer is to my hometown, Wheeling, WV. We usually stay for 4-6 days. I get to eat my favorite Di Carlos' Pizza, stuff myself with pepperoni rolls, take my kids to my favorite local park, play mini golf and go paddle boating. We go the Cabela's and look at the fish and other animals & do some shopping. We get to visit my parents and my brother & his family. My kids get to play with their cousins for several days and we usually all go to the Good Zoo. The last couple of years my folks have rented a cabin at Oglebay Park for all of us & before that we crowded into their small house, that used to belong to my grandparents.
This year though, we don't get to go. My parents now spend 11 months a year in Florida instead of 8-9. So they sold the house to my uncle and rent an efficiency apartment for a month while they are in town. My dad organizes a couple baseball tournaments in July and he has to be there or they probably would just stay in Florida apart from occasional week long visits here & there. 4 additional people will not fit into an efficiency apartment (especially one that shares a kitchen with another apartment). There are no cabins available at Oglebay due to a golf tournament and no hotel rooms in a 50 mile radius due to those baseball tournaments and Jamboree in the Hills. July is a busy month for the tourist industry in Wheeling and like it or not I am now officially a tourist. I have no 'home' there any longer. I have to start making reservations in January for our July visit.
My parents are coming here in August, on their way to Florida, and will stay a few days, so at least we will get to see them. We'll see my brother's family at Xmas. But this means I will have to go 2 WHOLE YEARS with no Di Carlos pizza. I'm seriously bummed about the pizza. I love that pizza.
I don't listen to music very often. I'd like to while I am on the computer, but it is in the family room and the kids make too much noise playing, or have a Wii game on, or someone is watching TV and I feel guilty wearing headphones to shut my kids out even more than I already am by being on the computer in the first place. Unless I am alone in the house, I don't listen to music very often at home. I listen to audiobooks at the gym, which mostly leaves me with the car for music.
I have a Zen Vision M mp3 player now. It has 40GB, holds a couple dozen audio books, my entire music collection, a ton of photos plus I don't know how many videos (I don't use the video function much). I mostly use it to listen to audio books at the gym, waiting for appointments or when I am in the car. Problem is lately I'm listening to not family friendly books. Assorted curse words are heard, sexual situations, violence, etc. It was one thing when I was listening to A Bone of Contention and my son wanted to know what a whore was. It is an historic mystery set in the late 1100's. The sleuth was a whoremistress. The word was being appropriately used in it's proper context. (He also asked what a bishop & destrier were) But I wouldn't like to explain the use of whore in a modern pejorative context. So audio books are out in the car for now, leaving me with just music.
Before the Zen I had an iPod mini. A nice little 4GB player. I traded up to get more space and the video option. I gave the iPod to DH, who has never used it. I found it the other day and decided to load it up with all my music and just leave it in the car or at least in my purse. That way I'd always have music ready to go & wouldn't have to go through bookmarking the audio book, checking to make sure the bookmark took (I never trust it, but it has always bookmarked things), backing all the way out to the main menu, going back into the music playlists, etc and then having to reverse it all to get back to the book 20 minutes later when we get to they gym. Plus I don't mind if the kids play with the mini. I'm terrified they will accidentally lose my place in an 8 hour audio book & it will take me 45 minutes to find it again.
Here is my problem - I don't know how to categorize music. When I say 'load all my music' I am talking about 350 tracks, 100 of which are Celtic and another 50 are kiddie songs. I have about 200 songs that, in my mind, fall into 2 categories - 80's and not 80's. 40 or so songs are 'not 80's', leaving me 160 songs to subdivide into manageable playlists. I eventually came up with 80's alternative, 80's pop and 80's metal/hair band. Most of the music in 'not 80's' is from the 70's, except for some Nickleback & the Bare Naked Ladies.
When was the last time I encountered new music? ummmmm....
What Your These Fireworks Say About You |
 You are focused, single minded, and intense. You don't let others see your intensity often, and when they do, they are quite surprised. You burn brightly, but you also burn steadily. You have the endurance to get the one thing you desire most. |
I read 22 new books. I also reread 17 of them and 3 others. On April 1 I started keeping track of my reading as part of the 50 Book Challenge on Library Thing (the challenge being to read 50 books in a year). I was 100% certain I'd meet the 50 book goal well before the 12 month mark. I was not expecting it so early. As of June 30th I had read 56 new books and reread 20 more books in 3 months. Granted, 40 of those new books would probably be called 'fluff' but still, I read them.
I scrapped 14 layouts and earned a 40% discount at SSD.
I cooked dinner 5 nights a week every week.
I went to the gym at least 2x a week every week
I patched 5 cat clawed holes in the pool ring, one of those holes I patched 4x before the patch actually held.
I was accepted as a Hawt Freelancer on Traci Reed's CT.
I was given a guest spot for August on Eva Kipler's CT
The boys and I read 19 books, most with a dinosaur theme.
DH bought a motorcycle
I finished 3/4 of a crochet dinosaur and am a third of the way through another one I am designing as I go
500 Best Muffin Recipes
Amigurumi World: Seriously Cute Crochet