You know what’s bugging me today?

Those adorable stickers on the rear windows of vehicles that proudly proclaim Little Johnny plays T-Ball for the NE Stars or Little Suzie takes gymnastics at the Northside Gymnastics Center. The stickers grow as the child grows. Billy plays the drums in the high school band. Betty is a cheerlead on the Varsity Squad. Want to know what school they attend? The sticker will tell you.

My princesses have been in more than their fair share of clubs and groups: swimming, baseball, volleyball, band, choir, ballet, soccer, girl scouts, FFA, 4-H. All of these groups have tried to sell me stickers at ridiculously inflated prices so that I too may tell the world how dang proud I am and so that everyone may know that I’m a good parent because my kids are in activities and not on the street.

Both girls have begged me to put these stickers on the car window. That is, until I explained why no one should have a sticker on their window.

When I’m behind someone with stickers on their car and they park and get out, I want to walk over and ask “How’s Johnny doing in T-Ball? I didn’t make it to the last game but now that I know what he looks like and where he plays, I might just stop by.” Or when the vehicle is parked in the drive way and the kids are in the front yard, I’d like to drive up and yell, “Hi Suzie, where’s your mom?”

It’s kind of sick. No, its really sick. But that’s what sick people do, right?

I just can’t believe parents would give total strangers their children’s names and activities. If they see the child with the vehicle, they now know what the child looks like. If the vehicle is at home, they now know the names of the occupants, and now the sticker tells them the location of where the child might be out of the parents’ sight, taking classes or playing games.

I’m no genius but I can’t believe no one else has thought of how this information could be used to harm children. I don’t need to tell people I don’t know how great my kids are. I’m too busy telling the people who know me and my kids how proud I am of my girls. I don’t need a sticker to tell anyone for me.

Taking one in the kipper

Well for once I beat the cosmos.

Little princess felt better that night but hadn’t eaten anything. So she tried mashed potatoes (her favorite) and went off to bed. I thoroughly expected to get a good night’s sleep and send her off to school the next morning. Ha! Ha!

2:30 a.m. Deja vou I am awakened to moaning. No vomiting but she feels worse than yesterday. I get her settled back on the sofa and check on her in the morning. Nope, not gonna make it.

While I’m waiting for Big Daddy to get home so I can go to work, I decide to check her tonsils. YUCK, they’re huge. I’m just gonna call the doctor and see what he thinks. Of course he thinks she should come in, he does have a mortgage after all. Big Daddy doesn’t do doctors but he agrees to bring her to my office so I don’t have to back track to get her.

She arrives at my office at 3:30 pm and she seems fine, happy, well. I’m starting to get pissed off that she’s feeling better. “Now, I’m going to pay the doctor $20 bucks to tell me you’re fine?”

Well, tomorrow starts a three day Easter weekend. And as I always say, “Kids and Pets never have emergencies until the office is closed.” So we’re going anyway. Hey, I do get out of work early.

On the way there, little princess asks what the doctor can do to make her feel better. I tell her our long standing joke: “He’ll probably want to give you a shot in the butt with a 6” needle. Then you will forget what else was wrong because your butt will hurt so much!” Ha! Ha! We both laughed. (For the record neither child has ever had to have a shot in the butt.)

The doctor apparently wanted to start the three day weekend early as well because we were called right a way and didn’t even have to sit in the exam room but about 3 minutes. He comes in and I explain what’s been going on. He examines her and takes a strep culture. He comes back after a couple minutes. “Hey, she has strep throat. I’d like to give her a shot of antibiotics in the buttocks.”

We both start to stutter, “wwwhaaattt?”

So to wrap this up, we stayed home for 2 more days together and watched a butt load of movies. All the while listening to how much her butt hurt. How much her stubbed toe hurt almost as much as her butt. And how much everything hurt in comparison to how much her butt hurt.

Just another day in the life of...

I sat in my hammock chair tonight at dusk and listened to the neighborhood. It was quiet, no human noise. I wondered where my neighbors were that they were missing this awesome evening. The birds chirped and dogs barked. I swayed in the breeze and thought how lucky I am and how perfect the moment was.

BAM! The screen door slams.

“Mommmm, do you want to know what she is doing now!” Big Princes whines.

So much for the perfect moment. I haul my butt out of the hammock and head inside to deal with the latest calamity.

“I’m not tattling, I’m just telling you…(amazing that she has been using these same words for the last 11 years) She’s washed all the dinner dishes without using a washrag, Big Princess says, trailing behind me. “And were you aware she broke a candle holder during Spring Break last week. Cause I don’t think she told you and she said she would tell you.

Little princess is having a rough night. Her ADD is kicking her ass, she can’t remember anything she’s been told to do. We spend 20 minutes arguing over her choice of outfits for school the next day. You can’t wear navy blue pants and a navy blue shirt.

It’s 8:15 and I’ve about had it with all the arguing. Little princess comes out of her room and starts to argue with Big Princess who is sitting next to me on the sofa over something in their room while I’m trying to watch TV. I yell, “Shut the hell up!” Little princess comes back out of her room and says “What?”

Argh! “Shut the hell up! And I can’t believe you just made me say it again!”

Big Princess looks at me and says, “Say what again?”

“Shut the h…” I think I’ll just take a nice long bath.

2:30 a.m., I am suddenly awakened by moaning. What the hell? Are we being haunted? I look up. Little princess is just standing beside the bed. “I think I’m gonna puke.” “So why are you in here and not in the bathroom? I prefer you puke in the bathroom.” So I get up and get little princess a bowl and settle her on the sofa and return to bed. Ten minutes later, I leap up to the sounds of vomiting.

It’s gonna be a long night.

To Do Lists and stress

COMPLETED
Garage Sale – check
Paint the Kitchen – almost done
3 days in the field for Railroad audit – exhausted but done
Easter Caroling – done
Palm Sunday tacos for church – yummy and completed
Spring Break – over!
Napoleon Dynamite dance off – cancelled and replaced by a couple games of pool
Trail Ride – cancelled due to the kids not turning in their paperwork (possibly replaced with a campout or tube trip to the river)

STILL TO DO LIST
Easter – gotta make the girls baskets and buy a ham
Boss has her baby – 1 week and counting
Pap Smear – no prep work necessary on my part
Camp out with Sunday School Kids – the biggie
Big Princess Graduation – the biggest event this year

The garage sale and tacos made almost $200 for the Molvoda fund. Now just need to raise another $2,000! Big Daddy has the kitchen 85% painted. And I still like the pale yellow color. It was a rough 50 hour work week but the overtime pay will be nice.

We didn’t sound too bad caroling with no music and no practice but if you pick songs the old folks know you can’t go wrong. It only took 10 whole minutes and we were off to lunch. The kids seemed a little disappointed that it went so fast. Spring break went fast too. The girls didn’t do much, trip to the mall, had a friend spend the night.

I’m kind of relieved the trail ride was cancelled. It was one of the most spectactular experiences I’ve had but last year but everything fell onto me to handle. I’m looking to de-stress my life and simplify so I’m not going to kill myself to get everything together if the kids (not my own) can’t even turn in paperwork on time after reminder calls and a one week extension. Poo on you! We’ll have to get together and decide what they want to do, maybe a camping trip or tube down the river.

Well, I still have plenty to do and stress over. The Church camp out isn’t really that big of a deal. The other teacher deals out the responsibilities pretty evenly so no one has a ton to do.

There is the Graduation!!! What with family coming in from all over the country and a big party to plan, I think I'll focus my stress there.

Dirty shoes and a sore butt

I’ve been in the field for 3 days now. I’m exhausted but happy to be back in my cubicle. I’ve missed my computer and being able to write but working 12 hour days really doesn’t put you in the mood to write. We were so far in the country that the roads were too rough to even crochet. I only have 4 squares left out of 63 squares for the afgan. You’d think that I could whip out 4 squares a day riding around for 6-8 hours. But all I got was a sore ass and dirty shoes.

My boss is due to give birth in less than 2 weeks so we all decided that she shouldn’t be out in the field driving without someone with her. So I volunteered. I got to meet the guys in the field and see the pipeline and see a railroad commission audit. It was cool but exhausting.

I’m very proud of my self. I kept my mouth shut and didn’t say anything stupid. At least I don’t think I did.

I saw some pretty country side, got to know my boss really well, and learned more about the industry. Pretty successful 3 days.

Never Eat Something Bigger Than Your Head

That's the moral. Here's the story:

My frog died. Little princess came and me this morning while I was brushing my teeth and said frog was dead in the fish tank. Now he has “played” dead before so I kept asking little princess “are you sure?”

“Yes, he’s floating on top with a dead fish.”

Well, the dead fish thing didn’t even register. I went to the livingroom and was about to poke him (official measure used to insure something is actually dead) when I noticed the dead fish. It was half in my frog’s mouth.

Apparently he tried to eat a fish (no clue as to whether it was alive or dead at the time) that was almost as big as him. It was stuck in his throat and he must have choked to death.

I went and got a coffee cup to scoop him up. I guess I was thinking, maybe, I could pull the fish out and maybe he’d be ok. But the fish was firmly stuck in my frog and the body pulled off without the fish’s head. I think it must have happened during the night several hours before we discovered them.

Little princess wanted to flush the frog, which is the customary way to dispose of dead stuff from the fish tank. And while the frog was less than one inch long when I purchased him, he is/was about 4-5 inches long as of this morning. I nixed the idea due to plumbing issues. I asked her to take him to the mulch pile and bury him, which is where the larger of our dead pets reside, many bunnies, a couple cats, a guinea pig, some chickens, etc.

I go back to brushing my teeth. I have to start over because I can’t remember where I left off. I’m almost ready to go and I realize little princess hasn’t come back in. She’s about to miss the bus. I run to the back door and holler for her.

“I can’t find a shovel and I’m trying to dig the hole with my hands,” she sniffles. Cripes child, just throw him over the fence and catch the bus.

So ends my frog’s life, not flushed, but neither buried, rather tossed over the fence. Many people have marveled over frog’s life while standing in my entry way waiting for a child or paperwork or even girl scout cookies. They were amazed by his size, his sightlessness, his albino color, his toe nails with their black tips, his ability to live totally under water.

I spent many an hour watching his graceful underwater ballet. He seemed to dance for my amusement at times. He could balance on one toe on top of a plant. He could zip back and forth rather quickly. Sometimes I would call to anyone home, “come see what the frog is doing!” Sometimes no one was interested enough to come look. Now he will only dance in my mind.

So long frog, you were cool!

Powder Puff takes a powder

Big Princess made the Seniors’ Powder Puff Football team. There was some talk of her being second string due to her knee problems of the past. Apparently she was more dedicated than the other girls and she was on the team.

Now, officially, there were only supposed to be 4 practices before the game against the Juniors but in reality, they practiced almost every day. They took it seriously. Their football players-turned coaches took it seriously.

Little princess and I (and ferret) showed up for the game a couple of minutes early and I, for one, was impressed with the Seniors’ quarterback. She threw straight and true. I had no doubts as to who would win the game.

Boy was I wrong. I’m not sure what happened but the Seniors lost for the first time since like 1978.

Big Princess played well and wasn’t injured and that’s all I was concerned about.

Little princess had fun showing off ferret.

Ferret had a good time running around checking out the various shoes (he likes stuff that stinks). The crowd was amazed by my giant, leash walking, goldfish cracker-eating, rat.

The senior football players-turned coaches sat on the benches after the game and cried.

I made it home in time for Survivor.

The Job Reporting Blues

The company took over another company but it seems the other way around right now. My boss will be changing to a guy from the new company, out of Houston. (I’m not going anywhere.) My other boss is in a tizzy. They told us he is getting a promotion but he’s also getting a boss. Something he hasn’t had. My other, other boss is pissed about who it looks like she will report to.

I haven’t been here long enough to settle into any kind of routine so I’m pretty un-phased about all this, at least after they told me I still had a position here. It doesn’t much matter who I report to.

The new guys have been here from Houston all day. They seem pretty relaxed and casual. Not what I was expecting. They were casually dressed in jeans. We dressed up.

They seem unusually taken with me and the woman from regulatory. Then again, we are the only two women and we do have long blonde hair. I mentioned I’ve never been to Houston and they said I’d be there sooner than I thought. That’s odd. Then I got a hug from the new guy from Houston that will apparently be my new head boss. Even odder…

Two of the bosses from here will be in Houston tomorrow at their offices. They are all trying to hammer out policies and procedures as well as a game of musical chairs as they fight for position.

This certainly will never be a boring job…

Birds, naps, and schedules

I got the girls parakeets this weekend. The female is white and the male is blue and black. I found them on the internet and it was only about 30 minutes away so Saturday morning I loaded them up and picked up my resident bird expert, a twelve year old from church and her older sister and away we went. Oh, I didn’t tell big daddy. That way I didn’t have to get them anyways after he said no.

Little princess named them Bonnie and Clyde and we bought them a nice big house shaped cage. Bonnie is semi trained and we thought separating them will help them bond to us so we sent Clyde to our expert’s house for some training of his own.

Bonnie is settling in nicely and starting to become accustom to the girls’ room. It is, however, driving the cats and dog crazy to be shut out of the girls’ room. They close the door when they want to play with the bird and the dog stands there and huffs under the door. The cats are making this crazy meowing sound that I’ve not heard from them before. Its that sound cats (outdoor one’s) make when they are stalking or being stalked by birds. Hopefully, the cage is secure on top of little princess’ dresser.

Big daddy didn’t have a problem, after the fact. He said, “What ever makes you happy.” I’m thinking in his mind he was saying that and “what ever makes you forget that I quit my job.” (Still a little pissed)

I took all four girls thrift store shopping, its one of their favorite things to do. Dropped Big princess at Powder Puff football practice and rented movies right before the rain set in. So the rest of the weekend was spent on the sofa watching movies. Not a bad thing for a family so much on the go.

What’s coming up? (No more days on the sofa, that’s for sure!)

Possible garage Sale
Possibly painting the outside of the house or kitchen
3 days in the field for audit for work
Easter Caroling on Palm Sunday
Spring Break
Napoleon Dynamite dance off
Easter
Boss has her baby
2 day Trail Ride
Pap smear
Camp out with Sunday School kids

This isn’t the schedule for the year. This is the next 30 days!!!

Lord, every moment is a gift from you. Please help me to enjoy each and every moment of the next 30 days. Help me to not get caught up in the stress of planning or be derailed by the minor bumps in my daily road. Remind me that it’s more important to be in the moment than to try to record it for prosperity. Let me show others your love through my actions.

Mildly pissed but smiling

Wow, I must have been really pissed because I posted the last entry four times (since corrected). No, really, just another foul up by blogger. It kept telling me that it couldn’t find the server and in the past that meant “And by the way, we lost all your data for this entry.”

Big daddy must know I’m pretty upset because now every day I come home and he has done stuff around the house. He mowed the backyard, which really needed it, but he also cleaned up all the crap in the yard (literally and figuratively), moved the wood pile and even put the lawn mower away. Something he can’t usually seem to do until it has rained at least twice on it. (This explains some of why lawn mowers only last about 5 years at our house.) He moved all my plants out of the garage and hibernation and into the front yard. He vacuumed the house, cleaned the toilets and tub, and has the laundry under control.

He hasn’t done this much in a long time. I was expecting him to come home and sleep all day (which would really piss me off). I mentioned that I could pick up a couple gallons of paint and he could finish painting the outside of the house. (Its only about ½ done since last spring.) He just nodded his head.

He has not, however, looked for a job!

Or even mentioned looking for a job.

He has said he’s trying to pick up some extra hours at his part-time job. We’ll see… We don’t have any wiggle room in the budget and I’ve cut off our credit for at least the next 5 years until we are credit free. I like to think of it as temporary castration. Just as painful but not permanent.