Monthly Archives: September 2011

1. I’m having router difficulties.

Well, I’m not sure if that’s what it is because I am seriously non-technical but it’s the only thing computery that I know to say and sound like I know what I’m talking about.

2. I fell yesterday while I was wearing those new cute shoes I blogged about last week. The heel got caught in a crack in the sidewalk and flipped me forward and I ripped a hole in the knee of my work pants and scraped the polish off my toes.

On the bright side, that means I get to go shopping and have a pedicure today.

3. Mom, if you’re reading this, I’ve been trying to call your cell phone and it won’t let me leave a message because you haven’t set up voice mail yet.

Brothers, if you’re reading this, can you help her? *grin*

4. I was reminded yesterday how a simple meal shared with a friend can bring encouragement to both.

5. Have a nice day.

I’m not much of what you’d call a “camper.”  I very much appreciate the great outdoors but enjoy doing so from a beach chair holding a fruity umbrella drink or reading  a book in the cool evening breeze on the deck of a cabin high in the mountains.  I’m not into skeeters and snakes and being unprotected in an environment where I am NOT at the top of the food chain but the kids had been asking to go close to nature and when my friend Emily offered the use of her lake house, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to be outdoors and still be able to retreat to a real bed with sturdy walls to protect me from nefarious varmints.

And I know some of you think that because we weren’t in a tent, we didn’t camp but, people, THERE WAS NO INTERNET, do you hear?

NO INTERNET.

Well, except for a very weak signal from someone’s unsecured Wi-fi but it kept going in and out and I felt a little ridiculous wandering around the property holding my iPhone up in the air trying to get two bars so I gave up after six hours fifteen minutes.

Isn’t that a pretty lake?  The boys were excited to head down there and try out their new fishing poles and it took everything in me to encourage it because as much as I’m not a camper, I’m a worse fisherman.  Don’t get me wrong, I love to cast the line into the water and reel it in but I don’t care one whit about catching anything on the hook because I’m squeamish about touching wiggly things and I end up feeling HORRIBLE that the fish can’t breathe while I stand jumping around and screaming for someone else to do something about getting them off the hook.

It’s relaxing for my companions.

ANYWAY, I did everything in my power to make sure that the boys wouldn’t catch anything by putting that optic green fake twirly bait on the line and telling them to cast in the middle of the lake instead of by the edges where the fish might actually be and for several hours that worked well.

But then Craig was a good parent and actually told them to do everything the opposite of what their mama told them….

and within minutes, JJ had caught his very first fish.

I tried to take another picture without Craig’s hand in the way but the fish wiggled mightily and JJ dropped the pole and ran.

He is his mother’s son.

And, just like that, a fisherman was born.  He only left the water to eat two bites of supper and then had to be dragged in at dark.

And the next morning?  Up at 6:30, dressed and standing by the door with his pole, begging his Daddy to go to the dock with him.  And you’ll have to imagine the delight on his face when he reeled in this three-pound catfish because when he saw those whiskers break the surface of the water, he ’bout near freaked out and ran for the hills.

And a great time was had by all –

Until I came home and found out I had a tick on my leg and reaffirmed my decision to stay inside for the rest of my life.

Have a nice day.

My in-laws are visiting which means no post for today since I am playing hostess.

And by playing hostess I mean we’re hopping in the car and going to the outlet mall to go shopping all day.   I love to shop with my mother-in-law – her motto is “You can run out of money but you can’t run out of plastic.”

My father-in-law is ditching us in favor of hanging out at Barnes and Noble for the morning.  He has also volunteered to pull weeds and set out some annuals, and yes, I’m a lucky girl.

I’ll be back tomorrow for a Tuesday installment of Monday Musings.

Have a nice day, and may the shopping gods be with you.

And also  with me.

Today I’m thankful …..

1. That I see little bits of sunshine peeking through gray clouds.

2.  That I saw my cat carrying the dead mouse before he was able to bring it in the back door.

3.  That my DVR finally has something to record.

4.  That I remembered to serve lemonade at last night’s Bible study instead of red Kool-Aid.

5.  That I have friends who know and love me well and send me J. Jill gift cards in the mail.

6.  That the x-rays came back and Tommy’s pneumonia is not as serious as we thought.

7.  That I ran around the block this morning and my foot didn’t hurt.

8.  That I have good relationships with my sisters-in-laws.

9.  That I cleared the 1,000 unread posts from Google Reader.

10.  That I have fun plans for the weekend.

Have a nice day.

So, remember how I was going to skeddadle to work yesterday?

Yeah, never happened.

I had every intention of making it to work and even dressed quasi-professionally so I’d have an excuse to wear my new Anne Klein shoes and I left the house and went to the eye doctor’s appointment where it took over an hour because apparently I have really finicky eyes that can’t see the broadside of a barn OR read the fine print and I was in an ambiguous mood and couldn’t decide if my options of 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 looked better.

And don’t get me started on why I paid $100 just to give someone my opinion on how well I see.  They’re the professionals – aren’t they supposed to tell me?

Moving on.

Turns out that my gravy train may have left the station because the doctor said that he though it was time to put me in a rigid lens and since I’d never worn anything other than soft lenses, he was going to have to help me put them in.

And by help me put them in I mean placing a solution-filled hard piece of plastic onto the end of a short stick and jabbing it square into my eyeball.

Repeatedly.

Because I kept blinking.

Because SOMEONE WAS JABBING A STICK IN MY EYE.

It was relaxing.

And in the middle of this delightful exercise,  my cell phone kept ringing off the hook and I had to excuse myself to answer the call because clearly it was urgent and, sure enough, it was poor Tommy telling me that he just couldn’t make it another minute at school.

He was feeling a little  yukky at breakfast but, you know, I’d spent the better part of the last three weeks with someone at home sick and whether or not he was ready to go back to school, I was certainly ready and that decision was clearly coming back to bite me in the butt so I told him I would get there as soon as I could.

So I headed back to pick him up, dropped him off at home and got him to bed, grabbed a bite of lunch, then headed back to school to pick up the other two, then came home, settled them in front of the tv and then took Tommy to the doctor where I learned that the last ten days of antibiotics had done absolutely nothing for him except allow his pneumonia to spread to both lungs and also gave him time to develop a double ear infection.

Mother.

Of.

The.

Year.

So I called Craig and asked him to head home early and then I spent the next four hours doing nebulizer treatments, going to the pharmacy, and then heading to the hospital to get x-rays done to see exactly what we were dealing with and got home around 8:00 and Craig said, “Hey, I like those shoes.  Did you wear them to work today?”

And I said, “Yes.  Yes, I did.”

Have a nice day.

I have ten minutes to type this morning because I have to scoot to work because OH MY WORD am I behind after spending the last three weeks at home playing Florence Nightingale to two kids with pneumonia.

I was pleased to see that my keycard worked when I swiped it at the campus gate yesterday.

I was also really pleased to see that I still had a shoebox where my trashcan used to live.

*sigh*

On the agenda for the day is a trip to the the eye doctor because I can’t see diddly squat when I try to read and, yes, I need bifocals.  Actually, I already have bifocal contacts but they haven’t worked well for a year but did I go in and have the problem corrected?  No, I have spent a year squinting and holding the book at arm’s length or alternatively taking out my contacts and holding reading material six inches from my nose.

My mother is shaking her head right now.  Yes, she taught me better. In my defense, I’ve been a little busy.

So it ought to be fun to sit up close and personal with the eye doctor and letting him see the pores in my face that are big enough to sink a battleship and hopefully I’ll have some news to report tomorrow.

Oh, look, my time for today is up and I haven’t said anything of real consequence.

Not that it’s different from any other day of the week.

Gotta’ scoot and deal with the crazy people.  Anything (in)consequential about your life today?

Do tell.

Have a nice day.

1.  We had a very fun night at the Chick last night with approximately 436,582,534 of our closest friends.    The moms were happy they didn’t have to cook supper, the dads were happy the moms were happy, and the kids were happy that everyone seemed to be in the mood to spring for ice cream cones and milkshakes.

It was for Jesus.  How could I say “no”?

2.  Tommy’s still not feeling great.  He tried going to school yesterday for the first time this week and only made in a couple of hours before calling me to come pick him up.  I had a feeling that might happen and had instructed him to bring home schoolwork and when he got in the car he told me that he had a science project that needed working on and he had selected “Build a 3D model depicting continental drift”.   After six minutes of working on it, he declared his original plan to build it with Legos a bust and asked me to do it for him looked to me for guidance  and I thought that paper mache might be the answer but given the complete and utter mess it might make our time constraints, we might just stick to aluminum foil.

3.  I finally made it to the new Big Lots that recently opened on Capital and will be back despite the fact they had Christmas stuff out in the middle of September.

I did find a couple of things that made it into the cart such as our favorite soap at half the grocery store price.

And Guatemalan coffee that was very tasty.

And I’ll have to go back because the boys were disappointed in the toy aisle and needed to eject after 10 minutes.

4.  I was browsing through the pattern book at Hancock’s the other day and may have found my next sewing project.

You know, for those MC Hammer sort of days.

5. And to end the week on a funny note, I lovingly and cheekily dedicate this video to my mom and dad.

Have a nice day.