Category: Life

If there was ever any doubt, there is not now …

I.

AM.

A.

DORK!!

And to add insult to injury, I’m a FORGETFUL dork!

I am quite sure my husband was wondering what in the world was wrong with me yesterday. I couldn’t finish about 80% of my thoughts, I took a wrong turn on our way to dinner last night, I nearly rear-ended someone because I took my wedding ring off and couldn’t remember where I had put it and was totally freaking out when in fact it was in the bathroom, where I put it, because I was running my fingers through my hair to flatten it and take the spiky look out of it …

*deep breath*

And to top it off, to put the cherry on my idiocy, I forgot to put the card back into our camera.

AARGH!

If you’re just surfing by (Hi!), yesterday was my husband and oldest son’s birthdays (yes, they have the same birthday, long story, you can read about it here), and I ordered them a cookie cake, like I do every year.

No biggie, right?

Well, it is if you didn’t have your stupid card in your stupid camera and took a bunch of pictures and was looking forward to posting them to share with ya’ll and you open the little door thingie on your camera and the card is no where to be seen but in fact, is sitting on your desk looking all innocent!

AARGH!

Stupidstupidstupid girl.

ANYWAY, it really wasn’t that big of a deal because the cookie cake? Sucked. Which is pretty sad considering I asked for stick people ….

Oh yeah. The artist at the cookie cake place? Totally screwed up my stick people.

WTH …?!

I asked the gal if she could draw two stick people, a father and son, because it was the husband and son’s birthdays, right? I thought it would be cute/funny to have the taller stick figure with his arm around the smaller son stick figure and maybe put a ball cap on the father figure because you know, stick figures look alike and that way everyone would know who the father was. And I got this totally blank look from the gal and she says to me, with a totally straight face mind you, that she wasn’t sure she could do the arm around the second stick figure. *blinkblink* It’s a stick figure, but you know, whatever.

What I ended up getting was two TINY stick people who were not standing anywhere close to each other and the ball cap? Looked like an upside down saucepan.

AARGH!

Oh well, we got a good laugh out of it and I WOULD show you a picture, but you know, the whole missing camera card thing and I’m a dork and well … moving on.

My parents dropped by (hey mom, if you have a picture of that cookie cake, can you post it to Flickr? Because you know, I’m a dork) bearing gifts. They gave the husband a gift card to a music store (score!) and gave GD a box full of … well, full of 16 individually-wrapped gifts.

It began with the card, that was #1. There was a $2 bill in it. COOL! I didn’t even know those things were still in circulation. Then, he opened the box, which contained 15 more gifts … an apple, a toothbrush holder, a can of Pringles, a package of popcorn, cookies, post-it notes, a school box, some pencils, hot chocolate, a notepad and on and on.

Exciting, right? Ah, but here’s the kicker, my clever little mother inserted a $2.00 bill into each of those gifts so GD had a BLAST first finding, and then pulling those bills out. He ended up walking away from the gift with $32.00 dollars. Cha-ching!

We later met my in-laws at Lambert’s (that’s a restaurant that throws rolls at you and walks around offering all sorts of yummy side dishes – it’s an all you can eat joint and quite popular in these here parts) and stuffed our faces with all sorts of yummy stuff. I took more pictures but you know, I FORGOT TO PUT THE CAMERA CARD IN, so you’ll just have to imagine six people around a table beaming smiles and full tummies.

Since we were so close to my in-laws’ house and we didn’t want them to drive all the way back to our house and then all the way back to their house, we sweet talked them into allowing us to come over with our cookie cake and we stuffed our faces some more.

Incidentally, that’s when I discovered the missing camera card.

I think the guys had a great birthday. Well actually, I know they did because GD told me this morning as I was taking him to school, that it was one of the best and considering that boy has had some really great birthdays (thank you very much), that’s saying a lot.

So mom, I know you’re reading this – THANK YOU for being so creative and for going to all the trouble of wrapping 15 gifts and making a certain 16-year old’s birthday special because I know you had a lot to do with his special memory. And if you have any pictures, I want them! Wah!

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NaNoWriMo Progress

Happy (sweet) 16th birthday, GD!!

Happy birthday, Husband!!

I’ll never forget this day, back in 1992, for as long as I live. I was eight months pregnant and speed walking through the mall trying to find something to give the husband for his birthday the night before. Didn’t we also have fish that night too, honey? It seems, in retrospect, that having fish was a trigger, but I can’t really remember that part very well.

All I know, is that about 3:00 o’clock in the morning, my water broke and I tried to wake the husband up and he rolled over and said to go back to sleep (yes, we’ve since TEASED him about that over the years). I was in denial. Our baby wasn’t supposed to be born at that time, he was supposed to be born in January – he was eight weeks too early.

I finally called the doctor’s office right at 9:00 o’clock because the pain was becoming unbearable. They told me, in no uncertain terms, to get my ass into the hospital NOW.

GD was born just a few hours later.

We still don’t know why I went into labor that day, but I blame myself. I pushed myself to the limits and paid the ultimate price, a premature baby. GD was in the hospital for six weeks (he came home two days after Christmas – that was the worst/best Christmas of my life). GD had a blood infection (because I waited too long to go to the hospital after my water broke) and had to have a blood transfusion.

There are many things I feel guilty about with the birth of my first child. But we prayed to God to give him strength and he did – he’s now the man you see today. (And may I just say, can anyone else see his mustache?? *SQUEE!*)

Nearly everyone we came into contact with November 18, 1992, wished the husband happy birthday and commented on his precious gift. Never let it be said that I don’t give AWESOME birthday gifts.

Happy birthday guys, I love you.

It’s 9:06 a.m. and I haven’t done a darn thing. Well, I’m up and awake, I suppose that’s an accomplishment. 🙂

The boys had a friend stay the night last night. I have no idea when they went to bed, late I’m sure, and they are still sleeping. I don’t look for them to wake up for another two hours or so.

Whenever the boys have a friend over, I have no choice but to sleep with my husband.

I’ll wait while you read that sentence over again. *grin*

I don’t normally sleep with him. I can’t. The man snores something terrible (and actually, I do too. I know this for a fact because I wake myself up sometimes) and considering I’m a really light sleeper, I simply DON’T sleep when we share a bed. So, when the boys have a friend over and I’m forced to sleep with the husband, I have to wear earplugs. And without fail, those earplugs work their way loose about 4:00 in the morning and thankfully, the boys are in bed by that time (though not always!) and I move to our fold-out bed in the living room, where I normally sleep every night.

We haven’t slept together for years now. We still, uh, visit each other (winkwinknudgenudge) but sleep? Newp. At first, it was weird and bothered us, but considering we both require sleep and we get along SO much better when we’ve had sleep, we have learned to adjust.

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MK had his heart broken this week.

The school hosted a Harvest Moon dance last night and MK wanted to ask the girl he’s had a crush on for the past four years to the dance. He even took enough money that he could buy her ticket. I was on pins and needles the entire week, just waiting to see what she would say and Thursday, he finally worked up the courage to ask her.

Two forty-five couldn’t get here fast enough.

When I picked him up from school Thursday, he walked to my car very slowly. His shoulders were slumped and he looked dejected.

My heart broke a little for him that day.

He was very quiet for most of the ride to GD’s school and just before we arrived, he told me what happened.

He never had the chance to ask the girl because he overheard her talking to one of her friends that so-and-so was taking her and that they were a “couple.” (Which is a very big deal in 8th grade. Remember the whole “we’re going together” thing even though kids that age don’t go anywhere and they aren’t allowed to date?)

He was crushed. His heart was ripped from his chest and trampled on. He had liked her for so long that I think he had just assumed they would be together when they got older.

I wasn’t sure what to say. I think a broken heart ranks right up there with a death – which in some ways it is, I suppose it is. What do you say? Telling a person it will get better, that there are many more females out in the school pool isn’t really comforting. And of course, telling him that he will get over his first love and this will soon become just a memory isn’t very effective when you’re talking to a pubescent 13-year old.

So, I just said I was sorry it didn’t turn out the way he expected but at least he hadn’t actually asked her – there was some comfort in the fact that he had retained a little dignity.

He later told me that it wasn’t so much that she had a boyfriend that bothered him but the fact that it was all that wasted effort. As I mentioned, he had liked this girl for about four years – really put her on a pedestal, and now? His hopes were dashed. All of his nervous energy around her, the notes he wrote her, the expectations were gone. They simply vanished the moment she admitted to liking someone else.

He was very depressed the entire evening. And he had no desire to go to the dance. Quite frankly, I was a bit relieved. Though I don’t know this girl, have never talked to her, I’ve watched her enough over the years to watch her grow into a cheerleader and an overachiever. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this, but I’ve watched as her achievements have changed her. She’s your typical gossiping, snooty back-stabbing cheerleader type and MK finally admitted that, without any coaxing from me, the other day.

So, I think we’re moving past his first broken heart. I suspect there will be many broken hearts for MK as he tends to wear his heart on his sleeve and is quite emotional – especially when it comes to the opposite sex.

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GD’s computer got a virus. He discovered it acting squirrelly Thursday night. It would simply lock up.

We like to affectionately refer to GD as the virus magnet in our house. That boy clicks on everything and always gets a virus, one way or another. We try to tell him to be more selective about the sites he visits and the links he clicks, but he INSISTS that the sites he goes to wouldn’t POSSIBLY give him a virus.

*smirk* He’s so naive.

Anyway, when he discovered his computer was infected, he went ballistic. He started cussing and throwing stuff, I was quite shocked by his reaction.

I just let him burn his anger out. And when he finally calmed down enough to form a coherent sentence and asked me how to reformat his computer and I told him to figure it out (because we’ve been down this road so many times and he knows how to do it he just wanted momma to take care of it for him), he went ballistic again.

Wow. You know, it’s times like these, when you react to something inconvenient like this, that your reaction tells you a lot about what’s in your heart.

GD has a lot of anger in his heart.

When he was FINALLY calm enough to approach, I told him this. He blushed. He knew he had overreacted (I can’t IMAGINE where he gets all that drama from *ahem*), but he said he acted that way because he was scared that this particular virus would steal all of his passwords and he wouldn’t be able to access files that he’s worked months on.

I could understand his reaction. I often react with anger when I’m scared/hurt/sad, but wow. We talked at length about his anger issues and I tried to steer his energy into something more positive.

“Look at the bright side,” I said. “Now, your computer will run like it’s brand new. You’ll have space for new stuff. This hacker slimeball actually did you a favor. So it’s inconvenient, big deal. Life is full of inconveniences, you just have to get over your anger and focus on the positive. Fix your problem and move on.”

And he did. His computer is running great now. He reformatted and set it up the way he liked it. I hope he takes a step back and runs his insane reaction back through his head because he really did act like a madman.

I need to teach that boy some deep breathing exercises.

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My parents took me out to lunch for my birthday last Monday. We went to McAllister’s and ended up chatting for a few hours. I really enjoyed myself. The older I get, the more I seem to “get” my parents. It’s weird. It’s almost like we’re no longer mother/father/daughter but friendly adults. It’s an odd feeling, but very cool. I hope I have that sort of relationship with my boys when they get older.

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The husband is wheeling wood into our garage so it will dry out and we can burn it in our fireplace. There is nothing like a cold weekend at home with a hot fire, delicious Krispy Kreme donuts and comfy sweats.

Ya’ll are free to join me if you want to. 🙂

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And lastly …

I ended yesterday on a sad, depressing note, let’s end today on a happy, funny note.

A friend of mine emailed this to me the other day (Thanks Jenny!).

It’s entitled: Democrats on Escalator and you democrats out there might not find this too terribly funny – however I totally laughed not because it was making fun of democrats (though there’s that *wink*), but because honestly, this could apply to so many people, not just one group.

Have you ever known anyone like this? Who refuses to take the initiative, think on their feet and simply MOVE?

I totally do. *grin*

Vodpod videos no longer available.

I might be back later with another post, or I might not be. Either way, look for another potato head NaNoWriMo update later.

See ya!

I think I just witnessed someone dying.

I’m so upset by this that I can barely see the screen through my tears. And I’m trembling.

And my God, I’m completely freaked out by what I saw.

I had to call my husband because I had to talk to someone or I was going to implode.

Let me see if I can explain this coherently …

I had stopped at Starbuck’s to buy a decaf Peppermint Mocha Twist (have you had one of these yet?? Liquid heaven) and I was on my way to the library to get my daily word count in before I went grocery shopping (something I do every Friday and hate to do every Friday).

I’m going south on Campbell and I’m approaching the intersection of Republic Road and Campbell when I see this white S10 pickup truck go bouncing to the side about two car lengths in front of me, in my lane.

My first thought was, what in the world is that truck bouncing for, how odd, trucks don’t bounce.

And then I saw the smoke.

And then I saw a moving van/truck come to a halt.

And then I realized, the man in the S10 truck had just been t-boned. The driver side of the truck was hit, head on by the moving truck.

You know how small S10 trucks are, right? It was like watching a mama bear giving her baby bear a push and the baby bear nearly toppling over from the sheer size and weight of mama bear.

The light turned red.

And I sat there, horrified, my eyes glued to the white S10 truck. It was like watching a crash scene from a movie – it was just surreal.

The people in the car next to me had their hands clamped to their mouths in horror – even their little dog, who had his head out the window, even the dog’s eyes were wide as if he understood what just happened.

The man in the turn lane, the accident had occurred right in front of him and who was in a prime spot to get hit by the S10’s momentum, jumped out of his vehicle and ran over to the man in the S10 truck.

A woman ran toward the accident from the bank on the corner with her cell phone clamped to her ear and she was yelling into her phone.

I was numb. Absolutely no thought went through my head, I was simply too shocked to have seen the moment right after impact. The picture of that truck bouncing to the side and smoke pouring from the vehicle still burned into my retinas.

When the light turned green, I switched lanes to get past the accident. The very first coherent thought that went through my head was “Thank God the boys aren’t here to see this.” And the second thought was, “Dear God in heaven, I pray that man is all right.”

I slowly drove through the intersection and past the trucks. There was debris littering the pavement and I took a split second to maneuver around it. Then I passed the S10 white pickup truck.

And I made the mistake of looking.

Dear God in heaven, I will never, ever, forget the look on that poor man’s face as I drove past.

He was tilted to one side, but still upright. It was as if he would have fallen over to the side, but perhaps his seat belt prevented him from doing so.

He was utterly still.

And his eyes were open.

And he had the most gruesome expression frozen on his face that I’ve ever seen in real life. It was a mask of both astonishment and horror.

He never moved a muscle as I drove past. And I was driving pretty slowly, not because I wanted to look at him, but because I didn’t want to get myself into an accident trying to get past him … so it had to be a good two or three seconds before I was forced to look away from him and drive past.

The man never even blinked.

I drove to the library. And I parked my car, turned off my engine and started crying and praying the man would be alright. I’ve never witnessed something so horrific before and I was, am, quite shaken up about it. I called my husband to tell him what was going on.

It helped to talk about it.

And now, life goes on. I’m here at the library, writing about my experience to you. I’m sure 99% of the people at that intersection are most likely to their destinations, another second, minute and hour ticks by and the image of that accident will fade from most people’s minds.

But not mine. I will never forget the sheer horror of witnessing a traumatic turning point in someone’s life. That man in the truck, and who ever was driving the moving truck, their lives, will forever be changed.

And I witnessed it.

I can’t imagine what the person in the moving truck must be feeling right now. Can you imagine being a part of that accident? Of course, the moving truck was barely damaged so I’m quite sure the person driving it is unhurt. But can you imagine the nightmares that person will have at the thought that he/she possibly killed someone?

It just makes me sick to my stomach.

As far as I can, given the speed at which the S10 truck must have been going to be bounced like that and end up where he did, he must have been running a red light. And the moving truck had been accelerating because he had the green light.

I’m quite sure, given the angle and the number of cars at that intersection, the moving truck never saw the the S10 truck until it was too late.

That’s purely speculation on my part, but I don’t see how it could have happened any other way. The light was just turning red when I approached the intersection …

*takes a deep breath*

Wow, what a sobering thing to witness. I will be scouring our local newspaper for any news on the man. And I pray it only looked serious and that he is okay.

My apologizes to my RSS readers.

I posted a really stupid entry and honestly, I don’t even know why I did that. It was nothing big, just a disjointed entry about my NaNoWriMo progress that I was trying to make funny, which it was not.

I’m in a really funky mood right now. I feel RESTLESS and ON EDGE. I just made a fool out of myself in an email and had to kiss some butt to make it better.

I’m distracted, impatient and ready for … something, I don’t know what. I haven’t walked in a while, I think I will tonight and burn off some energy – maybe that’s my problem, I’ve been sitting around too much and not being very active.

I have a MOUNTAIN of laundry to catch up on from camping this past weekend. And I feel like my house is just … cluttered.

No one to blame but myself for that one – I’m the clutter bug in my family.

My husband’s birthday is next Tuesday and I have NO CLUE what to give him and he won’t give me a straight answer when I ask him.

“What do you want for you birthday, dear husband of mine?”

“I just want your love, honey,” he says.

Swell. That’s not very much fun to unwrap … then again, it COULD be. *winkwink*

“I just want black socks,” he says when I push him more.

Are you kidding me?! How exciting is it to open black socks? (He goes through black socks like you wouldn’t believe and saying he wants black socks is sort of a standing joke in our family – but as you can see, I’m not laughing).

My family is spoiled; I spoil them. I like to make a big deal out of their birthdays (GD was born on the husband’s birthday – yes, I gave my man the ultimate birthday gift, a son) and this year, I’m at a loss as to what to do.

Not only do I have no idea what I’m buying the husband, GD’s 16th birthday is this year and though I had toyed with the idea of giving him 16 gifts, he’s a boy with virtually no interests outside of video games and computers – that crap is expensive.

So, I’m playing around with the idea of making a money tree for him, what teenager doesn’t love money, right?

*sigh* I’m not hormonal … or maybe I am? I don’t know. I need something … or maybe I don’t.

AARG! I hate when I feel like this!!

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NaNoWriMo Progress

I have to say, writing these protected posts is therapeutic for me. It gives me a chance to write from my heart, from my true heart (throwing censorship to the wind – for the most part at any rate), to air out my confined emotions and hopefully, to explain myself, because unfortunately, I need to explain myself most of the time – both in what I say and in how I behave. So many times, I simply react to life and throw my emotions out there instead of stopping and thinking about what I’m saying or doing ahead of time.

These posts give me the opportunity to not only explain my actions, but yes, apologize for them, too.

Again, I’m sorry if the protected posts seem exclusive and rude – they aren’t meant to shut you out, but to serve as a gateway from me and my thoughts to my family, but I will try to take the topic of those private posts and give them a public spin so you won’t feel totally left out.

The topic uppermost on my mind right now?

Ignoring my family.

I know that sounds unspeakable given our obsession to be super moms/parents nowadays. We all work very hard to have it all – jobs, family, children, interests, romance. And though I think it’s possible to obtain all of those things, I think it’s also necessary to sacrifice some of those things, too.

The key is knowing WHEN to sacrifice and HOW much to sacrifice.

Dr. Laura would disagree with me. She is a huge advocate of family – and I agree with her most of the time. I think women need to consciously treat their husbands as equals, as partners, not as slaves or scapegoats. I think if we (both men and women) make the decision to have children, then by God, commit to it and accept the fact that your life is not now, nor will ever be from that point on, just about you and your partner. You will have to give up that last bite of cookie. You’ll have to postpone/cancel things you want to do in order to educate/entertain your partner/children. You will have to put your needs on the back burner and you’ll have to learn to deal with that and not resent that fact.

Though I hesitate to say you should forgo your interests and dreams and focus your life around your family, that’s what needs to happen if you want to obtain true happiness.

You can scream feminist jargon all you want, that’s just how it is for women. Fight it, curse it, embrace it, love it … accept it.

BUT….

There is an independent, stubborn, selfish part of me that objects to this preaching. After all, I reason, just because I’m someone’s wife and someone’s mother, shouldn’t mean I have to lose sight of myself in the process, right?

And I’ve lost sight of myself A LOT in years past. In fact, it’s safe to say, I never thought I’d see the “Karen” part of me ever again because the “Mrs.” and the “Mom” parts of me dominated my life for so long.

But we’re not talking about the sacrificial part of being a woman, we’re going to focus on that small sliver of guilt we all feel when we thumb our noses at conventional ideology about marriage and children and concentrate on nurturing ourselves.

Surely, there is some way to have it all. Surely, there is some way we can balance family, children, career, and hobbies. Surely, there is some way we can agree on time and space to just be ourselves, to do what we want, when we want and how often we want.

If anyone figures that out, let me know. *grin*

In the meantime, I’m going to dub November as my selfish, ME time. November is my month. Not because my birthday is in November, because quite frankly, I don’t care that much for my birthday – it’s simply no big deal to me (though you wouldn’t know it by what I’ve posted recently, but that’s my family’s fault, they freaking spoil me!), no, November is my month because of National Novel Writing Month.

November is the only time of the year where I purposefully put my family second. I head to the libraries on the weekends so I can get a few hours of writing in. I spend a few hours every day getting my daily word count in. I put household chores on hold. I tend to forget things, even more so than normal (which is really saying a lot considering I forget A LOT), I become distracted and just a bit cranky because of my distraction. I’m on a mission to succeed. I will cross that 50,000 word finish line come hell or family suffering. It’s my personal challenge to me. And it’s about so much more than posting a “WINNER” badge or permission to download a certificate, it’s about accomplishing something big, it’s about accepting a personal challenge to do what I both love and hate to do – write.

My family is very supportive. In fact, they’ve always been very supportive. But I can tell they get annoyed and irritated with me. And when I ignore them, they act out by being snappish (husband), or by doing poorly in school (MK) or by picking fights with me (GD) all to gain my attention.

I know this. I accept this. I absorb the guilt from this, but still, I trudge forward. Oh sure, I pave the way with apologizes and attempts to make it up to them, but the bottom line?

November is my month.

I think this is doubly frustrating for my husband. Though he sees how important this challenge is to me and is supportive, I don’t think he quite “gets” it. He’s very goal-oriented. Everything that is done must be done for a reason. So, I’ve written four novels (well, after this challenge anyway). GREAT! Now, polish them up and get them published.

Easy, right?

HAHAHAHA. I wish.

He doesn’t understand (though I think he’s beginning to) that it’s not about getting published, at least, to me. It’s about finishing something I’ve started (accepting the challenge), it’s about sticking to one project (as opposed to beginning a story and then abandoning it when it gets hard), it’s about challenging myself and my story-telling abilities. It’s about making characters come alive through actions and dialogue, it’s about having fun.

And I’m having a blast folks, I truly am. If I put the guilt aside, and I do in November, I’m giving myself permission to enjoy myself.

I will make this up to my family in the next 11 months – until next November. But for now, for right now, I’m going to milk this experience for everything it’s worth and I’m going to try my hardest to FINISH the damn thing this year and actually DO something with it.

Or not. 🙂