Apr

26

Playground Tours

April 26, 2008 | 2 Comments

Hours of EntertainmentWhile the boys were at that early baseball practice at the high school the other day I took my 3 demon seeds delightful daughters to the playground at the elementary school.

I love the playground for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, in these tough economic times, its free entertainment for the kids. They can also:

  • - get fresh air
  • - scream & yell
  • - get plenty of exercise
  • - laugh & have fun
  • - use their imagination for all kinds of pretend games
  • - get away from the TV, computer, video games, etc.
  • - feel like they’re going on an adventure

The kids aren’t the only ones that can benefit from one of these excursions either. There are lots of benefits for me too. I can:

  • - get great pictures of them
  • - read
  • - write
  • - play
  • - relax
  • - get away from work & the computer

Since I work outside the home and live in a pretty rural area (hence long drives to get to work), I am away from the house for 11 hours a day, 5 days a week. And I feel like I miss a lot with my kids. To appease some of the guilt whenever I am home for a vacation week with them and the weather is warm I take them on a tour of the local playgrounds.

I love that the kids burn off a lot of energy, use their creativity in all of their pretend games and best of all smile and laugh for hours at a time. I’m lucky too that I get to see new achievements like one of them making it across the monkey bars for the first time or learning to pump their legs and swing on their own higher and higher.

The whining stops for a while. They sleep better at night since they are getting so much fresh air and exercise. The advantages are endless. Of course next time, maybe I should bring drinks & snacks. *oops*

Apr

17

Baseball Shuttle Service

April 17, 2008 | 2 Comments

Baseball PracticeMy son has decided to play baseball this year. This week is spring vacation and apparently I am the only mom in my town that’s home. The coach decided to hold practice at 11am on Tuesday, instead of 4:30pm like usual, and the phone started ringing right away - friends of my son looking for rides.

I have 4 children so after the 5 of us are packed in the van there’s only room for 2 more people. I quickly filled those spots and set to figuring out just how early I’d have to leave to pick everyone up and still get them to practice on time. The high school is 20 minutes away from us and we’re the closest.

Truth be told, I don’t mind being a shuttle service. I know how tough it is to be a working parent and try to get your children to their practices, games and other activities. I am one of those parents. I just happen to be lucky enough to work for a school so I’m home this week with the kids.

I set off an hour before practice started and picked up two more members of the 7th grade boys baseball team. When the van was full and we were headed to the high school my 3 daughters entertained the guys in their ever boisterous, exuberant, somewhat obnoxious, torturous fashion.

I heard my son’s closest friend tell another kid

“I’m going tape (the girls acting hyper), post it on YouTube and title it
This is what my best friend has to suffer through.
Every. Single. Day“.

Dude. You don’t know the half of it.

Apr

15

Dooms Day

April 15, 2008 | 5 Comments

I just finished filing my taxes. My state taxes. The federal ones were submitted months ago because they brought with them a hefty return. We can always use some extra money for luxuries like heating oil and gasoline (stick that in your economy Mr. President).

But the state taxes were an entirely different story. They insist that we owe them money. Bastards. So in my typical avoidance fashion I waited until the absolute last moment thinking it wouldn’t hurt so much. Wrong. It was way painful.

Truth be told, I wasn’t really trying to prolong the agony - I actually forgot all about it until someone posted something about Web Turbo Tax crashing on Twitter this morning. In denial much? Is it any wonder my finances are such a mess?

Apr

11

It’s Over

April 11, 2008 | 7 Comments

Thank you all for your well wishes and your prayers. My stepdaughter’s mom passed away Wednesday night. It was a long, hard battle and her body just gave out. My stepdaughter is a wreck, understandably, but we are trying to do what we can to help her through this. She is pregnant with her second child so it’s important that she continue to take care of herself.

The funeral is this afternoon and my husband and I will be attending. I wasn’t sure if I should go - I felt funny. My stepdaughter always wanted her parents back together and believed that I was the thing standing in their way. There is a lot more to it than she knows, or needs to know for that fact, but nonetheless I have felt like an outsider. I feel it’s appropriate of me to be there to show my respect but I don’t want to upset anyone that is already feeling a tremendous amount of pain. My husband seems to think she would appreciate my going - I’m just torn. I want to be there for her but I don’t want to make her feel like “What the hell is she doing here?”

Funerals and dying have always unnerved me. I have never done well faced with so many people in such outward emotional pain. I remember when I was in high school, we had 3 suicides in one year and I will never forget the parent’s faces from any of those 3 funerals. I have only lost grandparents, none of them was I old enough to be a part of the process, so I didn’t really understand what was going on. I can’t imagine what my stepdaughter is going through, I only know that losing my own parents has been a real fear of mine over the last couple of years as they are advancing in age.

I know we will get through this as a family. We are strong. I just wish I could take away her pain.

Apr

6

Into the Night

April 6, 2008 | 6 Comments

My stepdaughter’s mother is dying. They don’t expect her to live out the night. She has been battling leukemia since before Christmas, had a catheter to her heart that became infected. It developed into a resistant staph infection and it has attacked her kidneys. Her body is tired and it is shutting down. I feel so badly for my stepdaughter - she’s just started rebuilding a relationship with her mom in the last few years and now she’s losing her. My hope for my stepdaughter is that she’s able to find peace in all this. I only wish her mother had lived long enough to see her first granddaughter born in July.

Apr

6

Time Sucker #647

April 6, 2008 | Comments Off



I’ve been known to waste some time on Pogo and this game is no exception. It will be permanently located in the left sidebar if you’re interested in playing some more - careful though, it’s addicting.

Apr

5

Twitter

April 5, 2008 | Comments Off

I set up an account at Twitter a few months ago and I have been twittering away the day today while building a website for my husband.

I know a lot of you are tweeting already. Let me know where I can find you and feel free to follow me (if you’re not already. Because you know, you really should be. Why aren’t you? Did I do something wrong? Do I offend? Do you have better things to do?)


follow itsjustjules at http://twitter.com

Mar

31

Fun With Books

March 31, 2008 | 3 Comments

Usually in our house you can hear the dull, steady hum of the TV in the background. But I was reminded this weekend what happens when you turn off the TV and let music fill the house instead.

Fun with books

Those that weren’t reading were either drawing, painting, dancing, writing or doing something else creative and productive. I think a media diet is in order. Look what a difference a week can make.

Mar

28

How To Handle Telemarketers

March 28, 2008 | 3 Comments

A friend of mine sent this to me. It is by far the funniest way I have ever heard of to deal with those annoying telemarketers. Watch and enjoy (oh and don’t be drinking anything while you’re viewing this - my coffee went all over my screen).



How do you handle telemarketers? Do you ignore their calls, tell them to take you off their list or do you have a little fun with them too?

Mar

27

If I Ate More, Would I Weight More?

March 27, 2008 | 6 Comments

On Saturday I took my son with me to get the Easter shopping done. I know, nothing like the last minute right? Anyway, he had an ulterior motive - a new bike. He’s been saving his allowance all winter long and decided since enough snow had melted that you can see parts of the ground, it was time to go shopping. He set a budget for himself and only took a portion of the money he saved. I have no idea where he learned to be thrifty like that - certainly not from me.

New Bike So we scoured the department stores for Easter candy and bikes and he finally found one within his price range that he really liked and met his preset criteria - new and cool. And within his budget. We opted for a 26″ because the boy is 12, only one inch shorter than me and finally of an age to be responsible enough for the bike that it might last longer than a couple of months. This one will grow with him for at least a couple of years.

On Sunday, after gorging himself on chocolate he decided that maybe some exercise was in order - in the form of bike riding. So we carried the box in from my van, brought it into the playroom, unpacked it and set about assembling his new toy. It took us a while but we finally finished it. Nick took his new mode of transportation outside for a test spin and I commenced cleaning up the mess in my basement. As I was putting all of the plastic bags and paper pieces into the big box the bike came in I noticed the instructions across the bottom:

Bike Box

Apparently one isn’t required to check their spelling when writing copy for warnings on packaging materials.

Mar

24

Easter Weekend Recap

March 24, 2008 | 2 Comments

Easter itself was pretty laid back for us but the weekend was full of a lot of little stuff.

  • On Saturday I took all 3 girls over to the hairdresser for some seriously long overdue haircuts. We walked in and within 30 minutes the 3 of them were back out of there looking polished. What were the odds that none of the 3 hair stylists working on Saturday would have a client at the very moment we walked in? I should have bought a lottery ticket.


  • I dropped the girls at home and took off with my son, the lone boy in the family, to go shopping for Easter basket stuff. Procrastinate much? Sure makes the choices easier. There is one major department store in the city we shop in that has fallen by the wayside in the shadows of two of its major competitors. It’s the one I go to for all of my hard-to-find items because no one shops there anymore. I walked out of there with all of my goods for Sunday morning within 20 minutes of arriving - plenty of candy in stock, no crowds, no lines at the checkout. Sweet.


  • Took my son out to dinner just him and I. We never get to do anything sans his sisters so I wanted to make sure we had some fun. I let him choose the restaurant and we sat down, had some good conversation and some delicious burgers and fries (not fast food - real thick, juicy burgers and fries with the skin still on). It was awesome. And something I plan on doing a lot more of in the near future. Before it’s too late. And he’s a teenager. And all I’m good for is cash and a ride somewhere.


  • Saturday night you would have found me staying up until the wee hours assembling Easter baskets by myself, hiding eggs on my own and wrapping birthday presents I purchased earlier in the day for my youngest daughter (her birthday was Sunday in addition to Easter). Usually my husband and I do these things together but he was in bed sick - a sickness of his own making - and to say I felt a tad resentful would not even begin to cover what I was feeling. But that is another post for another day.


  • Easter morning the kids let me sleep until almost 8am. They had already started hunting for eggs - they couldn’t be bothered to wait for me to drag my sorry ass out of bed. Ahh how I long for youthful enthusiasm. The egg hunt was topped off by a breakfast of champions - M&M’s, Kisses, Reese’s, Milky Way, Peeps, etc.


  • The rest of the day was pretty casual. There was no visiting the relatives - they are all too sick or far away. No Easter dinner since my husband was out of commission for the entire weekend and my kids don’t like most of the traditional dinner fixings anyway. I know - I allowed them to be fussy and now I’m paying the price.


  • My stepdaughter came over later in the afternoon with her son. My husband finally managed to drag himself out of bed and we celebrated my daughter’s 5th birthday complete with cake, ice cream (yeah more sugar *sob*), a stuffed cat with its own carrying case and more Littlest Pet Shoptoys.


  • My husband spent the rest of the night trying to make up for the weekend but it was too little too late.


How was your weekend?

Mar

22

Happy Easter!

March 22, 2008 | 2 Comments

Happy Easter!

For those that celebrate it - I hope you have a wonderful day with your families.

And have fun peeling your children off the ceiling by the end of the day. I know that’s always my favorite part.

Mar

21

Men & Their Toys

March 21, 2008 | 2 Comments

GT Express Grill My husband has a new toy. Or two new toys to be exact. You see, given my husband’s current physical condition he spends a lot of time on the couch now, in pain, surfing the too-numerous-to-count TV channels. And he stops on a lot of infomercials. There is one in particular that he has watched over and over and over. And last week he bought them. The shipping was nearly as much as the freaking grills!

We got them last Monday but it was the week from hell for me at work so our cupboards were bare and I was hardly home - therefore they sat in their boxes, unused. Last night my husband decided to break out his new toys for the first time. He made stuffed chicken breasts in them for dinner and then brownies cooked in them too (after cleaning them out of course) for dessert. The chicken was delicious! Cooked all the way through, stayed moist and it all held together well. The brownies were another story altogether. They were burnt on the outside and gushy on the inside. Yuck.

But he was at it again this morning. First he cooked cinnamon rolls for the girls - they were excellent. Then he made bacon, egg and cheese biscuits for my son and for himself - the boys loved them. Then he made me a veggie and cheese omelet that was actually pretty good - who’d have thought! For lunch he made the girls these pizza pockets with pitas, sauce, cheese and pepperoni. They ate every bite. They never do that.

He is like a man possessed. And even though I really think they’re a big waste of time and money I have to tell you a secret. I’m just so thrilled he’s actually cooking something - I’ll eat express meals

every

single

day.

But please don’t tell him. I’ll totally deny it.

Mar

19

A Boy and His Dog

March 19, 2008 | 5 Comments

I was driving into town yesterday so I could take care of some errands. It was cold and there was a light mist falling. It was only 34 degrees outside - not quite cold enough for the rain to turn to ice or snow but cold enough to cut right through you.

As I turned onto Main Street I saw him. This boy of about 15 and he was struggling with his jacket. He had taken it off and he was trying to twist it around. It was then that I saw a little black, furry head peek out from the folds of the coat and I realized what the boy was doing. He was wrapping his puppy up in his jacket to keep him warm and dry.

Sacrificing his own comfort to take care of this innocent little creature.

And I was so touched, it stuck with me for the rest of the day.

Mar

18

What Would Freud Say?

March 18, 2008 | 1 Comment

I had the craziest, scariest dream last night. I was walking up a logging road in the woods - but not the woods near my house, more like the Great North Woods. Up ahead of me was what looked like a mound of some sort (dirt, animal bodies, who knows?) and on top of that was what I believed to be a dead grizzly bear. And its head was HUGE - MASSIVE even, but flopped to the side, tongue-hanging-out dead.

So I didn’t feel any care or concern over this known predator up ahead until it suddenly came to life, sprang off the top of the mound and started running down the logging road towards me with the obvious, express intent of ripping me to shreds. I panicked, I wanted to run but I knew that if I ran it would chase me and see it as a challenge. So I stood my ground and when it got close to me and reared up on its hind legs and growled that ominous grizzly growl I did the same thing right back. I remember having something in my hands like a sheet or something and waving it up over my head (I guess I thought I was making myself look bigger, I am a genius in my sleep) and instead of eating me it turned and ran away.

Usually to me dreams are just dreams. Just the minds way of sorting random images and stories into their appropriate storage files. But this one was different. It scared the shit out of me for one thing but also made me think about the double meanings in the dream. Is there someone or something that I think is really deceiving me despite their outward appearance? Who or what do I need to stand up to instead of running away?

And maybe I need to wash a load of sheets?