Take Me Out to the Ballgame...OR ELSE!

Last night, in a boneheaded move, the commissioner called the ballgames. It had rained all afternoon and they called the game at almost 5, just as the sun came out. It was 40 degrees...but we totally could have played.

And my 7 yo KNEW IT.

and he was righteously pissed off.

So first it was a meltdown with tears and then once that storm passed we had an evening of "there is nothing to do."

I'll be doing some sort of good weather dance every game day for the rest of the season. Because when "the good one" is bad everyone suffers.

Organizing Women to do Things

I just do not know how.

I tried to start a book club. I invited some people I like. I started by inviting 9 people I like to read a book and discuss it the next month. Unfortunately March was The Month From Hell and it didnt work out. April began with spring break for te schoolers but we scheduled a date late in April and I was pretty excited!

I sent out reminders last week.

and again yesterday.

And yesterday night the "oh, I cants" rolled in.

Very disappointed. I think we may manage to scrape together 4 (including me) which is less than half. And those 4 are all my friend's friends, not mine. Tho I like them and we certainly may become friends in the future.

bleh

EEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeK!

A MOUSE!

I bet Suburban Correspondant sent it over to pay her respects.

But the Cat has had the last laugh.

Maybe I could rent him out for pocket money.

I met the neighbor behind me

The one with 2 little girls who I have seen twice?

The one with girls, ages 4 and 6?

Yeah, she homeschools.

So why do they never go outside?

She asked me about church within the first ten seconds of conversation,.

and so I am assuming based on that that we wont be best buddies.

The word CATHOLIC has two possible affects- either it encourages them to try to convert me or it encourages them to stay away. Guess which approach I prefer?!

WRONG!

I didnt miss anyone. There simply was not time to do so. We arrived at the hotel on Friday evening after a long and tedious several hours on the Beltway. It was ghastly out there.

In other news, the husband bought the kids something for baseball practice at home. It guarrantees no broken windows because the ball is zooming along a piece of string. Its called a Zip and Hit and its quite clever. They are enjoying it!

I'm enjoying Sam Adams Summer Ale again after a loong winter.

Off to DC!

Just a quick weekend trip. Im going to see my brother in prison and spend a few hours with my friend who is just out of the psych hospital.


Does that sound like vacation?

It occured to me last night that I will actually miss the kids and the husband.

Frustration!

A month ago, I submitted about 600 dollars worth of claims to my health insurance provider. I had to self submit because my doctor was out of network. Having carefully filled out all the stupid forms and sent them off I was anxiously awaiting my payments. I called several times and each time was told NOTHING could happen before 30 days was up. At that point the claims would be reviewed.

Lies.

Those forms are not where they were supposed to be. I was concerned about that, since submitting important information like this to a PO box seems...well...futile.

So 30 days later, 600 dollars poorer, I get to re submit and wait again.


&*%^#@!!!!!!!

I have joined the cult

I bought a damned dyson.

Luckily I am too cheap to pay retail. I got one (shipped) for 250. This is about the average price of a decent vacuum so the cult followers will think I got some sort of bargain.

I still resent spending that much on something which doesnt entertain me, feed me or unburden me of a chore.

But Bush is sending me that check so i stimulate the economy... and I want to be a good citizen... and I have had my 90$ walmart special for 2 full years now.

mmmm, nothing goes better with that morning coffee than a lovely bit of rationalization!

Because I am only paying two fitty for the cult membership I'll give a real true review of this sucker when it gets here. In anticipation of its arrival I'll not vacuum this week. That should give the poor machine a real run for its money.

The Oft Forgotten 11th Anniversary!

To celebrate, we decided to engage in marital recreation before church.



In 11 years we have never ever been discovered in flagrante delicto by the kids.



But in the 12th year all that changed!



Thanks Brenna! And thanks also to Pat, the former owner who installed those non locking doorknobs!

Year Round School

Looks like we will have to do it whether we want to or not.

Normally I love our Read Aloud time. Sonlight picks the best books and all 3 of us enjoy the heck out of them.

Right now we should be totally into Little Britches, which is such a fabulous book that I have read all the sequels. But for some reason its not happening here! Its like the vibe is wrong for us right now.

Here's my one complaint about our curriculum this year:

we spent all last year on the period leading up to the colonialization and the Revolutionary War. We got slightly past the Rev War. And now this year we have to cover the entire period from 1800 (roughly) to 1946!

A lot of really fascinating stuff happened and we are just touching on it. Its good, but FAST!

Today we read about two significant american innovations: standard time (aka railroad time) and standard gauge railroad tracks!

We also touched on sky scraper construction and bridge building.

You couldnt pay me enough to have been one of the men working 65 feet under water to set the bridge supports on firm ground. Its truly amazing to me what people accomplished in the 1880s.

Maybe if we were so innovative today we'd defeat the things which plague us.

A Moment of Clarity

On Saturday Al cleaned the bathroom.

On Monday night he was doing his nasal douche (pause for giggling) over the sink he had scrubbed so well just two days before. He looked down at the tooth paste blobs and dirty streaks on the vanity and said loudly, "Didn't I just clean this thing?"

My deadly sin du jour

I cant stop thinking about my friend's garbage disposal. Everytime I ram something down into mine and listen to it grind away patiently I think about how hers whirs the water down like a freaking whirpool of disposally death.

Hers said PRO on it. Mine is lacking those three letters.

Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not covet. Thou shallt not covet.


I'll be writing that 97 more times in my mind.


Until I finally SNAP OUT OF IT. its a GARBAGE DISPOSAL!

The Most Exciting News in Several Years!

I have a myspace! WHY? well, I accidentally went there and found a friend from my childhood. And when you find a friend from your childhood you MUST contact that friend! Especially if she has just announced an engagement! And in order to contact that friend you have to have a myspace. And since you are on myspace you should check and see who else you know is on there! And then you must invite them to be your friend! And then once you have invited them you wait with baited breath to see if they ACCEPT!

Oh, its so exciting!

In my head it all sounds like If You Give Mouse a Cookie. Or is it a Moose that gets the cookie? I know its the pig who gets the pancake. I'm pretty sure its the mom who needs the margarita.

in my head everything that happens is translated into 3 year old. because anymore, that is the only level on which I can communicate.

Still Alive!

But the brain aneurysm was exciting to contemplate! It had occurred to me earlier in the day too. Does that mean I'm also a hypochondriac? LOL

I had the head ache before the nasal passage cleansing and after. But when I went to go to bed, shortly after posting, I developed a stuffy nose. I was excited because to me that meant whatever was plugging me up up there had moved down to the lower regions and was plugging my nose instead.

And when I awoke this morning I felt pretty good!

So I flushed the sinus cavity again, which less sputtering and hullaballoo than last night.

And several hours later the headache is still gone.

So, in closing, all hail the sinus douche!

Sinus or migraine

sweet Jesus, it hurts whatever it is. all the pain is gathered into a knot slightly above and to the right of my right eye. I had been assuming sinus and I bought a sinus douche kit

(I'll pause so we can all giggle)

and stuck it up my nose and swirled my head out. That felt bizarre. Dizzying and scary but good!

but the pain is intense and unrelenting.

I'd love to take pseudofed but I enjoy sleep too much to sacifice it.

What say the internets? sinus or migraine?

Does He Really Exist?

No, this isnt existential pondering about God.

My husband can't find his birth certificate. Nor can he locate his social security card! For an exciting few moments he was unable to put hands on the driver's license!

This same individual keeps muttering about needing a passport.


Better him than me.

UPDATE! Proof of his birth has been established!

How to handle sibling disputes

Im never sure how to deal with them. Both my boys claim the other never gets in trouble and that I dont care about them and my middle martyr claims the oldest could kill him and it would be all right with me.

Would there be quiet then?

I blame my mom for her lack of example in this department and probably she blames hers. If dead people blame one another for things.

So I was really glad for the useful tips on how to deal with infighting found over at here at the Suburban Correspondant's blog.

Thanks for the reassurance that reading another parenting book will not help!

Anyone who goes over there pay special attention to Jill's comment, which states that kids are perfectly capable of fighting about the potential for future fighting. I think she is probably correct and the only possible response is chocolate. Maybe with wine. And the closet looks better every day!

Our library, home of coke products and fritos

and an occassional new book.

I have been chastised for my lax parenting by our local library. It was only a matter of time what with my laissez faire style and uninvolved demeanor. I do believe less is more when it comes to interacting with my kids, as evidenced by my homeschooling and formerly AP choices.

Right before Easter we hit the library to gets some books and pay for the book which we lost (which I don't believe we lost but that is another story.) I took Brenna and headed to the cashier's desk while the boy (7 and 10!) headed to the children's room to browse.

These boys are not rotten tomatoes. They do not scream and shout and act like hoods while at the library.

They save that for me at home.

When I had finished my business with the cashier I headed down to the children's room and was accosted by a library lady with an ax to grind and she proceeded to grind it on me, informing me children under 14 can't be alone in the children's room and my children were what they called "UNATTENDED."

I was annoyed. No. actually I was PISSED OFF. mightily so.

she presented me with a written copy of the policy which I didnt read.

But I should have!

Bc according to the website:

Unattended Children
Please do not leave children unattended even in the Youth Services Department. Children up to age seven (7) must have a responsible caregiver, age sixteen (16) or older on the premises. If the child is five (5) or under, the caregiver is asked to remain with the child.


Bite me, library lady. I have a call in to the library and am awaiting some sort of clarification on the policy. I will not be chastised by some peon (probably staff, not even a real librarian) in the children's dungeon (I hate our library!) for perfectly reasonable parenting.

Excellent News!

According to Dr Sarah Benson I have won 1 millions Euros!

Woohoo!

So much better than winning 1 million dollars in this day of the weak buck.

I wonder what I have to do to claim it... Probably just email my SSN to good old Dr Sarah.

You wouldnt think you would need any sort of PhD to notify people of winning the lotto. Fraudulent lotto or otherwise.

Very odd.

If You Want Sympathetic Glances and Kindly Tolerant Smiles

Simply take your three children to Mass for the Foot Washing and etc (its a long one!) by yourself.

Leave the husband at home!

Make sure the smallest child has not napped!

I had never been to the Triduum masses before this year. I'm a cradle catholic but we were not devout I suppose. I mean, we did Holy Days of Obligation (Mom took me out of school even) but we never went to the extras. The extras tend to be the coolest parts.

Different churches handle foot washing differently. Ours has 5 stations set up around the church. Lines form. Father washes the feet of the first person at each station. After that, your feet are washed and you wash the feet of your neighbors in line.

Brenna's feet were SO FILTHY from all the outside time earlier (crocs) that she and I stayed in the pew- washing is optional, not required.

My son and his RCIA classmates washed each other's feet. There was horseplay in the line but the actual foot washing was fairly reverant.

Undoubtedly not reverant and GIRM-y enough for some, but that is another post entirely.

(GIRM is the officially prescribed order of the mass and how things should be done.)

Towels were brought to dry feet and then washed and donated to St Vincent de Paul.

guess who forgot to bring a towel?!