And so it begins

The Diva got her  birthday presents from grandma yesterday.  So far this is what I’ve heard this morning:

Blah, blah, blah, Edward.  Blah, blah, Bella.  Blah, blah, blah, Edward and Bella.  I would fill in all the other words but there is just not enough space here.  She is completely obsessed already.

Oh.my.god.

I may have created a monster.

Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain. ~ Bella

Facebook and Mad Cows

Which Boston Legal Character Are You?

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This is certainly exciting news for me since Alan is by far my favorite character.  I wa sure I would end up being a Denny though – what with the Mad Cow disease and all.

I’m not kidding.  I can’t remember anything, ever.  I guess I should qualify that.  I remember some things, like what time my children were born and what they weighed.  Beyond that?  Nada.  I have a datebook where I write down everything.  Even then?  I forget things.  Important things.  Like birthdays.

I finally joined Facebook at the invitation of a couple of old friends.  I joined, logged on, and saw pictures of my friend’s recent 40th birthday celebration.  How much do I suck?  I know her birthday is in November, and I know another friend was planning a party of some sort.  And still I forgot.

Frankly, I am scared that this memory loss might be an indicator of things to come.  How can I forget so much and NOT have it be an early indicator?  I think I’m pretty much screwed.

Anyhow, if any of you faithful three readers are on Facebook and want to be friends, let me know and we’ll connect.  Do it quickly while I still remember who you are.

The existence of forgetting has never been proved:  We only know that some things don’t come to mind when we want them.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

I’m so not cool post #26

I have not read Twilight.  Yeah, I KNOW I’m the only person in the free world who has not.  Thank you for reminding me.

My daughter has shown interest in it.  I read the summary on Amazon.  I decided in complete prudish fashion that she wasn’t quite old enough yet.

My soon-to-be-thirteen-year-old-daughter is now getting the book for her birthday.  From Grandma.  On my suggestion.  There is a waiting list to borrow the book from her Language Arts teacher – and I guess I decided if all the other thirteen year old girls were reading it (from their classroom library no less!), so could the Diva.  I totally caved.

But the best part?  She won’t KNOW I caved.  She will never know that I TOLD Grandma to get her that book.  And?  I’ll get to read it, too.

Win, win.

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.  ~Anna Quindlen, “Enough Bookshelves,” New York Times, 7 August 1991

Is your house on fire, Clark?

Who knows what movie that’s from?  Anyone? Anyone?

Our outside Christmas decorations are up.  Don’t judge.  They’re up, but not lit.  Because you know, up here in the northeast, when there’s a balmy day in November, EVERYONE decorates outside.  We’re kind of screwed when it’s time to undecorate because everything is frozen to the ground in January.  And February.  And March.  Hell, we’re lucky if there isn’t snow on the ground during our Easter egg hunts.

Overheard today:

P-Man:  What’s for dinner tonight?

Me:  Meatloaf.

Him:  The awesome one?

Me:  No, I thought I’d give the crappy one a whirl this time and see how that goes over with all of you.

What I learned today:

Showering should be done as early as possible each day.  While slippers and a hat might cut it for drop-off in the morning, it is NOT acceptable for delivering forgotten items into the school during the day.  My bad.  I mean, not that I did that.  I TOTALLY knew better. 

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.  ~Danny Kaye

The quest for warmth

We jumped on the pellet stove bandwagon this year.  I wasn’t ever truly sold on the idea because I knew so many people who were buying the stoves and snapping up pellets by the ton.  It stood to reason, in my mind, that the reasonable price of pellets would skyrocket – typical supply and demand.  I was wary of the idea that the pellets would actually save money over heating fuel.

And?  I hate the stove.  I hate everything about it.  It’s loud.  The three fans we have positioned around it to circulate the warm air are loud.  And cold.  Everytime I walk in front of a fan, I get a blast of cold fan air blowing at me. 

There, I said it.  I admit it.  I am, apparently, not environmentally conscious when it comes to heating the house.  I want warm air radiating from the baseboards in every room.  I don’t want to feel like I’m standing at the Equator in the living room and have to don mittens to put away laundry in the bedrooms.

Ok, it’s not really that bad.  But like any non-centralized heating or cooling system, it’s hard to move the warm (or cool) air through the entire house.  And did I mention that it’s loud?

Here’s the thing.  I know when P-Man was trying to decide where to install it (and there are certain requirements for placement), he took into consideration the fact that I spend nearly all day at my desk.  He thoughtfully installed it right behind me so the warm air would blow in my direction.  And it’s loud.  And the fans. 

Some days it bothers me more than others.  Guess which one today is?

Some days I’m a super bitch
Up to my old tricks
But it won’t last forever
Next day I’m your super girl
Out to save the world
And it keeps gettin’ better  ~ Christina Aguilera

Dumbing down

Is it normal for a mother to encourage her child to NOT worry about school and grades?  Because my child?  Is going to give herself an ulcer worrying about her grades.  My straight A+ child. 

I’ve already had to limit her access on the computer for the purpose of checking her grades.  She’s found a way around that since the students all received their laptops a couple of weeks ago – she just uses that and checks at school or when I’m not paying attention to what she’s doing.  She will check her grades multiple times daily, if allowed, just to make sure nothing has dropped.

Last week she called to ask if she could stay after school for “math help”.  I was on the other phone with P-Man and he heard my end of the conversation.  When I got back on the line with him our conversation went something like this:

Him:  The Diva is staying after school?

Me:  Yes

Him:  For math help?

Me:  Yes

Him:  Isn’t she getting an A+ in that class?

Me:  Yes

Turns out she stayed not because she needed help, but because anyone who stayed got to start their quiz early AND got three extra points added to their grade.  I asked her just how much higher she could go than where she already is and she just gave me her “Mom, you’re so dumb” shrug.  Want to know what she got on her quiz?  You know you do.  She got 107.  She aced the quiz, answered a bonus question correctly, and the three extra points.

Last night she attended a sleepover party.  A little before 9:00 PM she texted me to ask me if her laptop was charging.  I texted back “Don’t worry about it you are at a party.  Have fun!”  Her response was “Ok, but could you plug it in please?”

Don’t get me wrong, I am super proud of her.  Clearly, she did not get her genius IQ from me.  I can still help her with homework, so that must be saying something about my intelligence level.  (No, seriously, I know a lot of parents who CAN’T help their 7th graders with homework.  It’s beyond them.)  Yet the fact that she is so overly worried about her grades, in turn worries me greatly.  That’s a lot of stress and pressure for twelve years old.  I can’t even imagine what her book bag weighs every day, because she brings home every. single. book. she. has.  Just in case.  I’ve asked her to stop carrying everything home, to bring home just what she needs – if nothing else, for the sake of her back.  She agreed, but I still see her heft her bag onto her back every morning and I KNOW she has extra books in there.

So is it wrong?  Is it wrong for me to try to get her to chill out just a little?  Anyone who has read this knows I didn’t apply myself in school.  I could have done really well for myself back then had I put forth a little more effort.  I don’t want her to take the same route I did, especially since I know she has much more potential than I ever did…but I also don’t want her so stressed out that she has a meltdown in high school – or before.

Encouraging without pushing, suggesting without nagging.  It’s a fine line and I’m not doing a very good job of knowing which side I’m on.

If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.  ~Emerson M. Pugh

Juveniles

The Diva has been getting up earlier and making muffins for herself and her brother every morning.  The only thing is, she forgets to grease the pan so it ends up soaking for eleventy nine hours before I can clean it properly (yeah…she makes the muffins and I get the dishes.  Sweet deal, huh?).  This morning I walked into the kitchen to see her spooning the final bit of batter into the pan.  I asked her if she remembered to grease the pan, and she sighed heavily and scraped all the batter back into the bowl, cleaned the pan, sprayed it, and filled it again.

This afternoon when I was putting dishes away, I decided to put a sticky note on the pan.  I wrote GREASE ME on it so when she pulls it out of the cupboard tomorrow she’ll see it right away.

I showed the Postman.

Him:  Why don’t you ever wear a sign like that?

Me:  I thought it was already understood.  Do you really need to be reminded?

Yeah, we’re still like 17 year olds sometimes.

I’d like to meet the man who invented sex and see what he’s working on now.  ~Author Unknown

And the winner is…

Michelle

I was very happy when her random number came up!  She’s a Sox fan, a military wife, a mom.  Go check out her blog – she has lists of freebies and giveaways and I intend to add her to my blog roll so I can get in on some of these freebies so many of you are involved in! 

Thanks you all for your entries!  As always, I came across many interesting, useful, sweet, insightful blogs this past week.  Now I have to catch up on all my household chores that got put off while I perused blogs all week!

Again, congratulations Michelle!

If you don’t get everything you want, think of the things you don’t get that you don’t want.  ~Oscar Wilde

Happy news first

So quite a bit happened during my blogging hiatus.  I’ll start back in to things with a happy ending story.

This is Hazel Mae:

She is the newest addition to our family.  We named her Hazel Mae because of our other hound dog named Ellie Mae.  We thought it would be cute to have two hound dogs with the same middle name.  I will write about Ellie Mae sometime soon, but not today.

Hazel Mae came to us looking like this:

She is part Red Bone and part Beagle – although we are having a hard time seeing the beagle in her – save for one black spot on her tail!

She was born as part of a litter to a family who don’t have the means to keep a littler of puppies.  They wanted to give the puppies to good homes and thought they had done so with little Hazel.  Four hours after the new owners picked her up, they called to tell the original owners that she had “gotten away from them” and they could not find her.  The original owners searched for her in the woods for four days before they finally located her – still alive! They had no intention of giving her back to the family they had entrusted her to, but they knew they couldn’t keep her. 

Enter the Postman’s sister-in-law.  I’m not entirely clear how she ended up as a foster parent for the puppy, but that’s exactly what happened.  She called me right away to ask if we were interested in another dog and I immediately responded NO.  I did tell her I would help her with the puppy while she was at their house.  Since I work from home, it was easy for me to go feed her, let her out, and play with her during the day.

Then the Postman saw her.  And fell in love.

Long story short, she’s part of the family now and has claimed her spot on the bed.  Which has turned out to be more important than I ever imagined it would, especially for P-Man. 

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole. ~ Roger Caras