A blonde week

I'm having a blonde week. Not a blonde moment, a blonde week. I've managed to do at least 1 stupid thing a day this whole week. It started on Monday when I was making dinner. I opened a can of green beans and stuck them in the microwave, but never turned it on. We sat down for dinner, Hubby took a spoonful of beans and they were still cold.

Tuesday I gathered up all the library books I could find. The kids have way to many books checked out and it's hard to keep track of what's due when, so I just grabbed everything and returned them all whether they were due or not. I didn't realize that one of the books I returned belonged to the school library, until I got a call from the county library where I returned it.

Yesterday a load of wash in the dryer and forgot to start it and didn't realized it until today when I went to start another load. So I had to rewash this load because it's been sitting there wet since yesterday morning.

This morning I was taking a shower and tried washing my hair with facial cleanser. And out on the playground I would yell at the kids to go down the slides. The slides are all different colors. There's yellow, red, blue, and green. I kept mixing up my colors. I'd be looking at the kid on the blue slide and yelling at him for climbing up the yellow. There was a disconnect between the color of the slide I was looking at and what was coming out of my mouth. I'm sure I confused more than a few kids.

I get goofy when I feel over stressed and lately I've been feeling very over stressed. Although it hasn't gotten to the point were I've forgotten where I live. Which has happened. I wonder if this could be an early sign of Alzheimer's?

Recess in the rain

We had a little misting on and off rain this afternoon, but had recess outside despite the weather. It was just enought to wet the sidewalk and that was about it. I had one 4th grade boy come and ask me if we were going to call indoor recess because it was raining. I told him, "No, it's not that bad out here. Besides a little water won't hurt you. You take showers, right?" To which he answered, "NO." (That was a tidbit of infomation I didn't need to know) When I saw him later in the day I said, "Hey, doesn't look like you melted out there.

A dog's life

I stepped out the door this morning on my way to work when I noticed our two dogs laying out in the yard. I envy them. What a life they have. They get to lay around in the sun all day long, bark at a few cars, and go play when they want. They have nothing to worry about, they don't have bills to pay or housework to do or kids to worry about. Basically they just sleep, eat and look for a little attention now and then.

Yep, I want to be a dog. Or I did until I saw the cats lounging in their chairs by the water dish. Now there's the life. Sleep all day by the pool, nobody expects anything of you and yet they still feed you, and you can act like you deserve it all. In my next life I want to come back as a pampered cat.

"Mom! The cat has a woodtick!"

JC came home from school and informed me that the cat has a woodtick in her ear.

"Well, pull it out." I tell him

"NO! I don't like touching them!" he says

"What makes you think I like touching them?"

"I don't know. Because you're Mom."

Guess it's time to get the tick repellent out again.... Oh I'm still not touching it. I'll make Hubby do it.

Careful what you wish for...

When I said we needed new drinking glasses this wasn't what I had in mind. Hubby heard me and brought up a box from the basement that, judging from the amount of dust, had been there quite a while. He opened the box, handed me one and said "Will these do?"

They're beer mugs with Santa's elves driving tractors. He bought them off ebay because he collects beer mugs and tractors but didn't realize they were Christmas glasses (not that it makes it any better) until after he got them.

Luckily there's only 4 of them and I'm hoping the kids use them and they get broken so I can go buy new drinking glasses.

Honey, leave the buying of new dishes to me.

Oh it gets even better

So the email I sent to the tech support for the computer program I was having trouble with, came back to me undeliverable. I'm taking the cd back to school today and talking to the technology teacher myself. This stupid program isn't worth the headache it's caused so far.

Note to other parents:
Don't buy the computer programs that are offered through the school book orders. This is the second time we've done this and have had problems both times. From now on I'll be buying programs from an actual store where I can take them back if I have problems.

Pan's Labyrinth-Movie Review

Pan's Labyrinth has been on my Must Watch movie list for a long time and I finally got the opportunity to sit down and watch it earlier this week.

Ten year old Ofelia lives with her pregnant mother and her tyrannical step-father, who is a Captain in the Spanish military fighting rebels in post civil war Spain. Ofelia finds an old decaying labyrinth in the woods guarded by a demonic looking creature who claims to know her destiny. He tells her she's a princess from a lost world, and in order for her to return to her kingdom she must perform 3 very dangerous tasks. Forced to decide between the dangers of her reality and the promises of the creature she's not sure she should trust; she reluctantly accepts the 3 tasks. In either world she finds herself in great danger.

It's a foreign film, but don't let the subtitles put you off; it's an excellent movie. One thing it's not is a feel good fairly tale where everything ends happily ever after. It's very dark and more along the lines of the Grimm fairly tales. Not for children.

One foot in the grave

As a teen I had a strange fascination with cemeteries, and the older the better. I don't know if it was morbid curosity or what it was. In our little town there were several of these forgotten cemeteries spread all over the country side, but most were now on privately own land or inaccessible by over growth.

One day when I was 15, I was out for a bike ride and on a whim I decided to take a rode I’ve never taken before. Before long I came across a small grove of trees that seemed out of place along the side of the rode. As I got closer I realized why.

There was a small worn sign that read “Black Brook Cemetery”. The trees had been planted in a square around the cemetery to provide some sort of protection. Although it was old, it looked as though somebody came once in while to care for the cemertery. It wasn’t terribly over grown and even without the sign you could tell what it was.

I parked my bike in the ditch and climbed the small hill into the cemetery. There were about 10 -15 stones at the most and I had to wonder if this was once a private family cemetery. The stones were so old that their faces had become unreadable.

As I walked around, the ground felt a little spongy and uneven, but I didn’t think to much about it. I found one stone in the back where the dates were still some what visible. Wanting to get a closer look I had to step over the grave. As soon as my foot hit the ground it sunk in about 4 inches.

Having watched way to many horror movies where the dead reach up out of the grave to grab the living, I let out a blood curling scream, pulled my foot from the hole and ran for the road. I pulled my bike out of the ditch and pedaled as fast as I could all the way home.

That was the end of my fascination with cemeteries. I never went back. Every once in a while when I'm traveling along the back roads looking for something to photograph, I come across an interesting cemetery that I'd liked to get a closer look at, but I try to avoid the ones like Black Brook.

I got spoiled

Hubby's work is seasonal, so he's home all winter and he just went back to work this week and will work 7 days a week until the middle of November. While he's been off he's taken over the laundry, grocery shopping, and most of the cooking. I didn't have to even think about those things all winter. It just hit me today that those will be my responsibilities again for the next nine months, in addition to the house cleaning, yard work, running errands, and chauffeuring the kids around. Oh Yay (sarcasm). The joys of single parenthood.

All about the playground

The things I find on the playground

As part of my job, I go out and check out the playground before the kids come out to make sure it's ready for them. I make sure the slides are dry, the puddles are marked with a plastic cone, check the condition of the fields to make sure they're not to muddy, pick up garbage or other things that shouldn't be out there, etc.

Four times now I've gone out there and found surprises. Earlier this year there was a used condom, this winter there was a pile of dog poo, a few weeks ago after we came back from spring break there was a chair. And then today I walked outside and from the building I could see what looked like a big duffel bag. I walked over to it and kicked it over and out fell a baseball glove and an athletic cup. Ewww! I didn't want to touch the cup to put it back in bag, but I knew I couldn't leave it out there, so I took the glove and kind of scooped it back into the bag and took it to the office.

Dress up day (again)

So most of the kids came dressed up today. It was really kind of funny seeing all these elementary kids so dressed up & running around the playground. There were a lot of girls in dresses that ranged from junior bridesmaid to Easter dresses. This one little girl came down the slide and her dress came out from underneath her as she slid down. She got to the bottom of the slide and gave this funny look and said "OHHHHHHH! Now my butt's cold."

Guess I should be wearing sunscreen

See my lovely burn lines?

Dress up day

Today is dress up day at school. For the last week or so JC has been bugging me about getting him some "fancy clothes". I told him I wasn't going to run out and buy him a suit and tie just to wear one day at school.

Last night he was doing his homework and said "Tomorrow is dress up day. I don't have anything to wear, AND I CAN'T WEAR A DRESS!"

"Yeah, you're right. A skirt would work much better for you." Hubby told him.

The Defective Easter Bunny

One year for Easter Mom thought it would be cute to get my sister, Z and me live bunnies for pets. She took us to a neighbor who raised and sold rabbits. I'm not sure if these rabbits were meant as pets or food and frankly I don't want to know. When we got there, we were welcomed into the house and in one corner of the porch was a small penned in area where there were maybe 10 bunnies to choose from.

We were encouraged to climb in to play with the bunnies for a little while and pick which one we wanted. They weren't the easiest to catch, when ever we'd reach for one they would all hope away as fast as they could, except one. He was the biggest out of the bunch. Z claimed him as hers and sat down next to him and pet him gently as I tried to catch the one I had my eye on.

After a while I was able to corner my bunny and grab him. He tried to squirm away from me when I picked him up, but quickly gave up and hntent to sit in my arms as I pet him.
Having our bunnies picked out, it was time to get out of the pen and put them in a box to take home. As Z tried to pick up her behemoth bunny he scratched her arms up pretty good. Now I don't know if the farmer knew something was wrong with this bunny or not but he suggested she pick a different one. She wouldn't hear of it, "Besides," as she reasoned, "he's easy to catch. And bigger is always better."

When we got the bunnies home, we let them loose in the kitchen to play for a little bit. We put some lettuce and carrots on the floor and watched as my bunny hopped over and began to nibble. But Z's bunny just sat there. She moved the lettuce closer to her bunny hoping to entice him to move, but still he just sat there. Then she got down on the floor and crawled towards her bunny. As she got closer, instead of hoping away, he just kind of pushed himself backwards across the floor.

"Why won't my bunny hop?" she cried.

"Maybe he needs to learn yet." I suggested

She picked up the lettuce and waved it in front of him while I got behind him to push on his back side to make him hop. Once again he just pushed himself backwards across the floor.

"He won't hop! My bunny's broken!" She started to cry.

Mom called the farmer to ask about exchanging the bunny and a few days later we packed him up and took him back. The farmer met us at the door, "I hear you got a defective Easter bunny." He laughed.

Z handed him the box with her broken bunny and went to pick out a new one. This time around she picked one of the smaller ones. She picked him up and beamed, "This one maybe small, but he knows how to hop."

How do you spell EXPERT?

I had a kindergartner come up to me today and he told me he knew how to spell EXPERT. I asked him to spell it for me and he said, "EIXPET". Not to bad for kindergarten.

Missing the simple things

I grew up in a small farming community in Western Wisconsin that I couldn't wait to get out of. I thought it was so boring, there was nothing to do. It was always exciting to be able to spend a weekend in the city at my aunt and uncle's, where we could go shopping or to movies anytime of the day or have a whole neighborhood of kids to play with. These were the things I thought I was missing living out in what seemed like the middle of nowhere surrounded by pasture land & corn fields.

When I was 20 I moved in with my aunt and uncle for a while and thought life would be so much more exciting. I thought for sure eventually I would move out and find myself the coolest apartment in the warehouse district, have a really cool job and live the exciting life I'd always dreamed of. But as I found out, your hopes and dreams at age 20 are pretty far removed from reality.

As I looked for an apartment I soon discovered that anything in my price range was nowhere I wanted to live. My cool job turned out to be a receptionist in a medical clinic paying just over minimum wage and the fact that I was to shy to go out and meet new people lead to a very unexciting life where I was in bed by 9:30 every night. My uncle made the comment several times that I was the youngest "old person" he knew of.

After I had dated Hubby for awhile, he asked me to move in with him. We're still living in the same house he bought 20 years ago. This feels more like where I belong than my Aunt & Uncles'. We're out in the country, not to many neighbors, this time surrounded by sod fields rather than corn fields. But yet every time I make the trip back to visit my parents I can't help but feel a little bit of nostalgia for the cows in the pastures, the back roads that whine past numerous country churches, the little known swimming holes, and the simple things that came with growing up in the middle of nowhere.

What's the name of that movie?

Yesterday we got a movie from Netflicks. Hellboy II. I came home and saw the envelop sitting on the kitchen counter and asked Hubby what movie it was. He said it was something the kids wanted to watch but I had to ask JC what it was. So I asked him, and he gave me a sheepish look, started to giggle and then quickly covered his mouth with his hands.

"I can't say it." He mumbled through his fingers.

"What?" I asked

Uncovering his mouth so I could hear him, "I can't say it, because I'll get in trouble."

I knew then what the movie was, but wanted to see how this was going to play out so I kept pressing him for the title. "Well, I don't think I can let you watch a movie if you can't tell me what it's called." I looked at Hubby who was trying very hard to keep a straight face but doing a very poor job of it.

You could see the wheels turning in JC's head as he was thinking of an alternative title that wouldn't get him in trouble. Finally he blurts out, "The Opposite of Heaven Boy...Two."

Hubby and I burst out laughing. "I don't think I've ever heard of that movie. What's it about?" I asked.

He pauses for a moment, "I'm not sure, but it's about The Opposite of Heaven Boy."

Laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes I asked, "Well, what's his name?"

"I can't tell you!" He said getting aggravated.

Even after we assured him he wouldn't get in trouble, he still wouldn't say it. This morning I asked, "What was the name of that movies we watched last night?" He gave me a dirty look and said "You know what it was! Now stop asking me!"

It's done! It's all done!

Cookie season is over! I turn in my final paperwork this afternoon. Despite a few of my freak out moments, things went pretty well. We were able to sell all of our cookies, I was able to get all the money turned it and deposited on time. I'm breathing a sigh of relief knowing I'm not going to be responsible for $3,000 worth of cookies. Our troop leaders asked if I'd be interested in doing it again next year and I think I will. Having had the experience this year, I know what we can to next year to be a little more organized and make things run a little more smoothly next year. I'm pretty sure, come next February I'm going to be cursing myself for saying I'd do it again, but hopefully the freak out moments will be less.