Author: Karen

… there really isn’t a point. This is just me, trying to make sense of my jumbled thoughts. Bear with me …

I went to bed at 2:00 a.m. this morning. And my alarm went off at 6:00 a.m., jerking me so hard out of a deep sleep it felt like someone had attached my heart to the back of a pick up truck and went from zero to 70 mph in 2.2 seconds – I’m STILL waiting for it to resume a normal beat.

I don’t know. I simply wasn’t tired last night. I spent the majority of my night watching TV and toggling between two shows: Striking Distance (and may I just say Sarah Jessica Parker looked hideous in this movie – sorry Sarah) and The Prince and Me (which I confess, I spent most of my time watching because hello?! Cute, romantic and sweet).

I finally forced myself to turn the TV off at 2:00 – I could have stayed up longer.

I don’t have insomnia. In fact, it’s safe to say, I’m a great sleeper. I think the reason I couldn’t sleep last night was because of two things:

1. I took an iron pill.
2. I drank a Red Bull at around 4:00 in the afternoon.

The Red Bull is pretty self-explanatory (though I shouldn’t have drank it so late in the afternoon, more on that later), but the iron pill?

Yeah, I’m anemic, severely anemic, if you want the truth. So I’m tired pretty much all the time. I take frequent “power” naps (defined as anywhere between 30 minutes to one hour a day) because there are some days I literally can not keep my eyes open. When I worked outside the home, I took naps in my car. I kept a wind-up timer in my glove compartment and took power naps with my seat reclined because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have the energy to work out the rest of my shift.

I’ve accepted this about me. And I take iron supplements as a result. But I don’t take them nearly as often as I should, so when I do, it’s like someone plugged me in to a higher voltage outlet than I’m designed for and I end up walking around with an energy buzz for 24-hours.

Think watching a movie on fast forward – that would be me when my energy levels are high.

And then I drank a Red Bull on top of that – it’s really no wonder I couldn’t sleep last night.

But the crash is coming, mark my words. I just hope I time my crash so that I get this post published, finish the short story I’m planning to post for tomorrow, mop my very dirty kitchen floor, take my husband’s dry cleaning in, go to the bank and withdraw a few thousand in cash, fold laundry and still have enough time to catch a 20-minute snooze before it’s time to pick the boys up from school.

What’s up with the plans to make a cash withdrawal?

I’m glad you asked.

GD has his driving permit now. And I’ve taken it upon myself to teach him to drive, as opposed to Kevin teaching him how to drive. Why? Because believe it or not, (and if you know me, you’re going to roll your eyes), I think I would have more patience with the boy than Kevin would.

I know. Crazy, right?

But seriously, I know my son. He’s a timid personality who likes to worry in his spare time. He’s scared to death of causing a wreck and though I understand his fear on a basic level – who DIDN’T feel like that when they first started to drive – his fear borders on a phobia, I think.

We’ve had long talks about cutting out the negative comments. Comments like, “I’m going to crash,” or “what if I cause a wreck,” or “what if I hit a pedestrian.” Etc.

First of all, we’re FIRM BELIEVERS in the power of believing. It’s real and it’s powerful. Believing is a combination of trusting God and in sub-consciously/consciously making yourself make whatever it is you’re believing come true.

This can be a good thing – it can be a bad thing – it all depends on where your believing takes you.

For instance, people who SAY, or PREDICT something bad is going to happen in their lives usually have something bad happen in their lives. Don’t believe me? Pay attention. Listen. Observe. Have you ever noticed how many bad things happen to doom and gloom people? It’s partly because they believe it’s going to happen and they’re not taking proactive steps to turn their situation around.

But this post isn’t about that, it’s about teaching my son to be more positive – to trust God and himself.

Because of his fear of driving, I feel like I can be a little more patient with him as opposed to Kevin, who really doesn’t understand where he’s coming from. And though I’m not really like GD in that respect either, I do understand him – he comes from a family of worriers.

GD and I have been out driving twice so far. The first time, I took him to a parking lot and we practiced starting, stopping, turning and parking. We spent about fifteen minutes doing all of that when I instructed him to drive down a side street.

I could actually SEE the boy’s heart beating against his chest.

But we took it slow, and he did it. We drove down a few streets before making our way back to the parking lot. He has a tendency to hug the right side of the road and I found myself gently, but firmly steering him back to the center of the road (we nearly hit a mailbox or two) but overall, he did very well.

The second time I took him out to drive, Kevin sat in the back seat, but with strict instructions not to criticize or yell. (I only had to shush him a few times). We drove down around our neighborhood and again, he did very well, except he keeps wanting to hug that curb.

I surprised myself. We test drove in my car and I thought I would be all freaked out and nervous but honestly? I wasn’t. I trusted him. I KNEW he could do it and I KNEW God would protect us.

And they didn’t let me down.

Now, back to the cash withdrawal.

Kevin has been haunting Craigslist this whole weekend. We went out and looked at a 1999 cherry red Mercury Cougar, complete with sports’ bra, on Saturday. The owners were a bit … creepy, and she had a folder stuffed full of receipts and kept calling Kevin “sir” – “sir, I didn’t put that scratch there. Sir, I had put this much work into the car. Sir, I’m an honest person, I wouldn’t screw you over.”

Etc. She was a nice lady but just a tad too eager … something wasn’t quite right. And her asking price was about $1,500 over the blue book value.

However, the car ran great and we figured she was asking a bit more because of all the work she had had done on it so we could understand her position.

GD liked it. I did not. It was a nice looking car, and as I said, it ran great, but wow, sitting in that thing was like sitting on the road with a steering wheel in your hand – it was that low to the ground. And it was really hard to get in and out of.

But this wasn’t really about me, it was about what GD wanted, so, we put it on our “maybe” list.

Kevin then stumbled across an ad for a car in Clever, Missouri. That’s about 30 minutes from where we live. It was for a ’99 Cavalier, 99,000 miles and in good shape. And that’s about all the ad said. No picture, nothing.

He called the guy. And I was annoyed. We were going to drive 30-minutes out of our way to see a car that may not even meet our initial criteria?

Why yes, yes we were.

We drove out there and got lost. Grr. We finally met the guy at a gas station where he promptly told us to follow him.

Huh?

It was his daughter’s car and he didn’t know the address so he thought it would be easier for us to follow him out to her house. Swell. Now I’m really thinking this is a wild goose chase at this point and we’re going to end up in the boonies somewhere with strangers.

The Blair Witch Project briefly flashes through my mind.

But the daughter didn’t live very far and when we drove up to her house, I was VERY relieved to see it was a black Cavalier – GD had been pretty specific on the color – blue, black or red, no white, silver or anything “girly.”

The car was in surprisingly good shape. The girl had two car seats in the back (it’s a two-door) and I didn’t want her to have to mess with taking one out so I could sit in the back, so I stayed behind while Kevin and GD took it for a test drive.

I stayed in my car and Twittered. 😀

They came back and since I wasn’t with them, I tried to gauge their thoughts by their facial expressions – they were both stone masks. Kevin asked a few more questions about the car, told them we were very interested, we left and I immediately bombarded them with questions as soon as the door was closed.

“Did it run good? The brakes didn’t scrape or squeak when you applied them, did they? I didn’t see any rust, did you? How did it feel? GD, what did you think?”

Both of the guys liked the car. It was exactly what GD wanted and the price was reasonable and in the blue book range.

We called them when we got home and told them we wanted it.

So, I’m making a trip to the bank today to get the cash and a bill of sale and we’re driving back out there to pick it up at 6:30 tonight.

I’d like to say GD is excited, but he’s not. It’s disappointing, but not really surprising. I honestly think the boy thought he was just going to be able to stay a kid his entire life and have nothing more taxing to do than sit in his room and play video games all day. Though I hate to push him too hard, I think he needs to be pushed just a bit.

It’s time to be man, dude. Suck it up.

I’ll post pictures, and more about this driving thing, tomorrow.

I’ve become a Twitter junkie.

I have so much fun tweeting the links I stumble across during the day and responding to other people’s tweets. It’s like I stumbled across this huge conversation and I’m free to come and go as much as I like and I don’t have to worry about appearing rude for leaving early, or over eager for jumping into the middle of it.

In fact, Twitter is taking up too much time. I’m finding myself checking it about a bazillon times every day and I’m not getting anything else done.

It’s time to put the brakes on this latest obsession and only allow myself to check it three (four, five?) times a day – max.

Have you heard of Reliv?

My in-laws are ALL about Reliv and they take every opportunity to talk about it whenever we see them.

*SIGH*

I like my in-laws, I honestly do, but it drives me crazy when they get involved in this sort of thing – they were HEAVY into Amway for years and years and then later into something else, but the name escapes me.

Now, it’s Reliv. They’re sellers, or whatever the buzzword is (I think the site calls them ambassadors?) So, we hear about the wonders of Reliv every time we get near them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’s a great product, but it sounds just a bit too good to be true to me. And besides, who’s to say that the main reason this product is so successful, to have “healed” so many people is because people are believing it to work?

See? Back to that believing thing again.

But honestly? Who knows. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. The thing I can’t get past is … it’s so FREAKING EXPENSIVE!

Case in point: When my in-laws found out Kevin hasn’t been sleeping well (remember the whole going to the doctor for his sleep problem thing?), they jumped all over it.

“Oh. You really must try this product. It’ll change your life. You’ll start to feel so much better and you’ll be sleeping like a baby!”

Pardon my skepticism, but I’m a pretty hard-core critic of stuff like this.

However, because it’s his parents, and he loathes disappointing them, AND he’s willing to try nearly anything at this point to get a good night’s sleep, he said okay, he’d try some.

They came over last night with FOUR cans of this stuff. Each serves a different purpose and you mix various scoopfuls into your very own life-changing concoction.

Can you note the sarcasm?

I don’t mean to be a butt about this, and if I’m wrong, I’ll be the first to eat my words, but honestly? I think this whole thing is a scam. And when my MIL told me the price we needed to pay her (she was selling it to us at cost, you understand) that sort of solidified the whole scam thing for me.

We ended up keeping three of the cans and it cost us a whopping $73.00. For a month’s supply.

Kevin nearly had a cow.

This stuff, this vitamin cocktail that is supposed to change your life, is supposed to be mixed with water, or milk, and drank three times a day. You use a heaping scoopful from two of the cans and you gradually increase the scoopage from the third can over the course of four weeks.

My MIL said that results vary (of course), but that he should start noticing a difference in how he feels in about a week.

I have to tell you, for $73.00 a pop, it better be a significant difference and not something that simply changes his pee from yellow to say, green, for instance.

But again, we’ll see how it goes. And if it really does help him sleep, then by God, we’ll fork over the money because the man NEEDS to get a decent night’s sleep.

I guess it can’t hurt to try it. Unless you count it hurting our wallet.

Uh oh. I can feel sleep tapping me on the shoulder. I better get up and move around or I’m going to ….. ZzZZzZzZZZzzzzZZZzZZZ