Category: Life-condensed

(I realize these types of posts are pretty boring. But I like to record the boring things … it gives me a sense of what our lives were like at the time).

Friday

Kevin came home about 1:00. He had gone to lunch with his soon-to-be ex-boss. In fact, he did this last Friday and will probably be doing that this Friday and next Friday, too. I find myself feeling a bit annoyed that he comes home early, which is stupid because I love having him home with me. I think it’s the break in my routine that annoys me.

I need to get used to this, though. The lease on his office runs out March 31st, which means, beginning April 1st, he’ll be home with me full time.

I’m still getting used to the idea.

He went with me to pick the boys up from school. They were happy, but not surprised to see him. Our lives are changing and though we’re okay with these changes, we’re still coping with these changes. I think the boys will really be watching Kevin closely throughout his job transition. He has talked so much to the boys about how they need to grow up and get good jobs so they can support their families that I think this makes them specially sensitive to the change.

Kevin went grocery shopping with me. Actually, he goes with me most times. We do even the most mundane tasks together. (In fact, my brother-in-law needed his help in loading up a heavy garden tool he had rented over the weekend and Kevin tried to talk me into riding along. Even though I knew it would only take him 10 minutes to help and then they would be done [they were] – I refused. I think he was a little hurt by that because as he said, “But we do everything together.” And he’s right).

We always spend more money whenever Kevin goes with me. Not so much on groceries, but other household items that I either put off buying or didn’t even know we needed.

We make a good team.

We watched Zodiac together that night. It’s a movie based on a real serial killer based in California in the early 70’s. He remembers hearing about the case – he spent the first seven years of his life in San Diego. In fact, his family arrived in Missouri the day of the second killings. Creepy.

Saturday

Kevin made arrangements for the Boys / Girls Club Thrift Store to come pick up our old refrigerator and microwave. We had thought we might want to keep our old fridge, but it was taking up too much space and we have really never bought food in large quantities so we didn’t see a reason to keep it. Kevin cleaned them up for the guy. The fridge wasn’t that bad, I had just cleaned it, but the freezer was a mess. Which is really weird, it’s a freezer, food is frozen. We’re thinking it must have been crumbs from the Eggo packages.

Kevin said there was an embarrassing moment when the fridge was being loaded (the guy put the fridge on it’s side in order to put it in his trailer [I thought you weren’t supposed to do that??], there was a HUGE ball of dust stuck to the bottom of the fridge. But then again, who cleans the underside of their fridge?)

We bought some grout sealant. It comes in a spray bottle and it’s as easy as spraying it on the grout. We hesitated in doing this – the last time we put sealant on our grout, it left a sticky, plastic-like residue and made portions of the tile look shiny. We didn’t like it. But our tile guy actually recommended this one to us and we’ve been happy with the results so far. It’s more like scotch guard. We’ll likely put another coat on it next weekend and THEN I can finally mop the floor.

Sunday

I taught Dude how to do laundry. And he did laundry all day. Even though he was uber annoyed at having to stop what he was doing to put another load in, it was good for him. Every time we treat him like an adult, he acts like an adult.

Go figure.

The problem is ME. Treating him like an adult. I baby these kids WAY too much and it’s starting to come back and bite me in the butt. I’m on a mission to teach both boys boring, mundane household chores AND we’re all going to take turns doing these chores every weekend.

Cleaning bathrooms should be fun. And I’m betting after they learn, they aren’t as sloppy when they go pee.

Kevin cleaned his office out. He has to make room for three more file cabinets from work that he will store for three years. That’s the time frame that they are legally liable for any residual paperwork. He spent a lot of time this entire weekend reorganizing the garage and his office and both look really nice now. I’m so blessed to be married to a man who likes to organize. There’s no telling what sort of shape my house would be in otherwise.

A light bulb burned out over our bar – it’s one of those fancy-smancy Halogen lights – so we headed up to Home Depot to buy one. While there, we finally found a ceiling fan for our kitchen. It was one that we could both agree on and it wasn’t too big for our space. Our kitchen is more long than wide.

I was so excited to see it mounted that I talked Kevin into putting it in.

Only, he ran into problems, naturally. The box wasn’t big enough and this fan? Is HEAVY. Like there is no way we have enough support heavy. So, he had to crawl into the attic to add a brace to the joint (look at me, acting like I know what the hell I’m talking about) and in doing so, a portion of our ceiling crumbled away. Apparently, our roof leaked at one time and rotted that portion of the ceiling out. Now he’ll have to put some mesh up there and replace the sheet rock.

Naturally. Nothing is ever simple, is it.

We made a trip up to Home Depot, but we were too late, they were closed. We went to Wal-Mart and even though they had more of the popcorn paint (because our light fixture was bigger than our ceiling fan we have a section that we have to fix up, OF COURSE), they didn’t have any light boxes.

Kevin tried to monkey-rig it (he’s so good at that) and though what he was going to do would have worked, he didn’t feel comfortable doing it that way, so we’ll have to buy a box for it today.

Hopefully, he can get that in tonight. Every time we mention putting a ceiling fan in our kitchen, we get raised eyebrows. I don’t know, is that weird?

We were too tired to cook last night, so we bought Taco Bell. All I had were the plain nachos (chips and cheese). I’m back on my eat-a-light-dinner kick.

The weather is warming up. It’s time to shed my fat rolls..

(Update from last post: The Internet came back on when I got home from the library – naturally. And it was indeed our service provider. But I can’t complain, because they rarely have problems and it was only down for a few hours so …. life goes on).

I had to get up at 6:00 this morning.

On a Saturday.

While all of my guys got to sleep in.

But I wasn’t bitter because it was for a good cause. Jazz had his first jazz performance of the year today.

Kevin couldn’t go with me, he had to stay at the house to let the cabinet guy in, so it was just me and Jazz. (Dude didn’t go because HELLO, it’s Saturday – nothing short of an earthquake could get that boy out of bed before 10:00 on the weekend).

It went well. I was a bit annoyed that their conductor had the kids begin before they were even settled, but when you’re on a timetable, you have to make do.

They played three songs. The first one sounded a bit sluggish (probably due to the fact that they were rushed), the second song sounded better and the third song made up for the first. I thought they sounded great and as usual, I was bursting with pride.

I asked Jazz how he thought he did after the performance and he had to be extra hard on himself, of course. He always is after a performance. He was pretty happy with nearly everything, except for the last song when the trumpets came in late (like I would know, but this is what he said). He was also upset because his belt buckle put a few more scratches in his saxophone bell, but you know, we didn’t buy him that black Cannonball so he could look at it, we bought it for him to enjoy and that’s what I told him. This is a magical time period for him and I want him to enjoy every minute of it.

I took a video, of course. I’ll post that whenever I get it online.

He’s got a big festival in Pittsburgh Kansas next weekend. We won’t be going to that but he’s really looking forward to it. He went with his 8th grade class last year and said it was a blast. He really loves jazz and in fact told me today that out of all the band activities that he’s involved with, jazz is his absolute favorite.

It really warms my heart that he has a passion for music and I thoroughly enjoy listening to him play. I hope he continues to pursue music after high school.

… other than their quiet, introspective natures …

… and their handsome smiles …

… and their easy, natural sense of style …

… and their bizarre sense of humor …

… is that it’s like having home-grown labor.

And THAT makes mama very happy. 😀

I TOLD you I Tweet random stuff!!

And by the way, I have NO idea if this is even how you do the whole “cool” hand thing. If I’m actually flipping you off in gangsta’ speak, then my apologizes.

Anyway …

It’s cold here. As in single digit cold. And we have snow, as in about 4 1/2 inches of snow with more on the way.

(By the way, did you hear about Fulton, New York? It’s been snowing up there for nine straight days and they have 55 inches of snow – with more on the way!! Wow, just wow).

But I’m not complaining. In fact, I’m just thankful it’s not ice because that much ice? Would be baaaaaaad.

We’re getting by. The temperatures are supposed to drop to the negative digits both tomorrow night and Friday night. I’m sitting here wearing a t-shirt, a sweater AND a hoodie (as pictured above) and I’m just NOW feeling comfortable. Our poor heater is on overdrive.

The boys are refusing to wear coats to school. They claim that the school is pretty hot and they don’t want the hassle of carrying a coat around. This means, that half mile they walk to reach me after school? They’re walking with just sweat jackets on.

Their lips are blue and their teeth are chattering by the time they reach my car. But you know, I’m MOM; I’m STUPID. I don’t know ANYTHING.

Silly boys.

The weather is supposed to warm up to the 30’s next week, so hopefully we can get rid of some of this snow. I’m getting pretty tired of dealing with snow blindness.

(I know. Wah).

Here are the boys’ school pictures:

Our boys are kind, smart and handsome – we make good people, Kevin. 🙂

I’m VERY pleased with the pictures this year. They have good smiles and the colors look great.

(Lifetouch goofed up and gave me two CD’s with Dude’s pictures on them, so I had to scan Jazz’s picture – hence the reason it looks grainy. *sad face*)

This was the last year that Dude will have his picture taken at school. Next year (next summer, actually), he’ll have his senior pictures taken.

THAT should be fun! 😀

I’m actually looking forward to the experience. I didn’t have my senior picture taken so once again, I’m living THROUGH my sons. *grin*

Actually, I don’t know why I didn’t have my senior pictures taken. I was working at the time and I could have easily paid for them myself … I guess I wasn’t willing to part with my hard-earned money just to have pictures of ME.

How boring.

I’ll have to start shopping around for a photographer in January. I hear they get booked up fast during the summer months.