Shameless Copy Cat…..

And because I couldn’t have said it better myself…..

From one of my favorite blogs…

www.coalcreekfarm/com

This, however , is one of MY children…not hers!

So, you want children?

Okay, but try this first.

• Go to bed, get all comfy and warm….have the fire alarm go off unpredictably all night.  Repeat this every night for at least 17 years.
• Take a bucket full of vomit and dump it in the back seat of your car, on your couch, all over your carpets, splash it down the front of your clothes and then put a few drops in the toilette.
• Take another bucket of vomit and soak all the bedding, towels, your clothes, your neighbor’s clothes and the cat in it until you have enough laundry to fill the entire house and keep you washing until the the next round of vomit…which will occur right after you make up all the beds with clean sheets.
• Okay, now you’re going to need some urine….put it in a spray bottle and have fun.
• Grab a couple of puppies, set them loose in your living room…leave the house for a few days.  They will simulate what a couple of kids can do to a room in a few minutes.
• Take a few of your precious collectibles and smash them to bits.
• Stain all your shirts with blood, paint, boogers…whatever is in the fridge.
• Cut a tiny hole in your curtains.
• Get a permanent marker…get to coloring!  Walls, floors, furniture, the entire world is your canvas.
• Buy all the Lego’s you can find in the world along with Matchbox cars, Barbie shoes, hair bows, tiny socks, candy wrappers, McDonald’s french fries, Goldfish crackers, Crayons and crushed granola bars: mix up in a tub and freely sprinkle the contents in your vehicle, garage, yard, under your bed, in your bed, under the cushions of your couch and every corner in your house….make sure you stand over floor vents and drop handfuls.
• Have a friend hide your shoes, all of them.  Wait until you’re ready to go to an important event to try to find them.
• Go on a long trip with a very loud and emotional person who will talk and cry and scream for the entire trip except for the quick nap they took right before you had to pull over to get gas…which caused them to wake up and be extremely irritable.
• When you stop to eat at a nice restaurant your travel companion tells you they forgot their shoes.
• Find a store to buy them some shoes.
• They will lose those shoes at some point during the trip and you will buy them three more pairs of shoes that are so ugly and cheap that you’re embarrassed to be with the person.
• They never lose the ugly shoes, they wear them everyday much to your dismay.
• Have someone call you to tell you they forgot their lunch at least three or four times a week.
• Put a sparkly unicorn sticker on the rear of your jeans and wear them in public all day.
• Take something sharp and scratch the crap out of your vehicle.
• Throw away three billion 5 dollar bills because that is what your children will need for this thing and that event and blah, blah, blah.
• Say the following every single day, “Put your shoes away. Pick up your jacket.  Eat your dinner. Pick up your toys. Flush the toilette.  Be nice to your brother.  Stop talking.  Listen to me.  Be quiet.  STOP!  NO!  We’ll see.  Maybe.  Go get your shoes.  Find your shoes.  Where are your shoes.  Why?  Go ask your father.  STOP IT!  I said NO! What did Mommy say?”  add a please and thank you occasionally until you realize it’s just a waste of your breath.
• Load and unload the dishwasher at least three times a day.
• Buy enough groceries to last a month, take them home.  Invite a teenager to come over and help himself to any food in the house.
• Go back to the grocery store…invite teenager….go back to the grocery store…invite teenager….
• Yell at a wall that it needs to get its room cleaned, wait for a response.  Yell some more.  Walk away defeated that the wall will never clean its room.
• Hope that the wall will move out of your house someday and have twenty of their own walls that never do anything you ask them to do.

If you can smile at the end of all of this…go start a family.

Mama’s Christmas Wish List

Shameless…..

Posting, just to try to win a prize….

So, all of you are subjected to this list….which I think are pretty neat questions to be answered anyway……

And hey, it’s $1000 GameStop gift card people!! Around these parts, that is GOLD !

Mama’s Holiday Wish List Meme

TodaysMama (link to: http://bit.ly/tmwishlist) and GameStop (link to: http://bit.ly/gamestop10) are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.

1. What is your holiday wish for your family?

Considering the year we have had, I just wish an uneventful, peaceful holiday. Time spent together. Great memories and lots of love.

2. What is your Christmas morning tradition?

Hmmm…..the kids are always wearing their new pajamas. We make them sit on the steps and wait for us to “check if Santa was still here” – aka, turn on the tree, start the coffee, get the camera ready…..then we usually have breakfast with my sister and her family.

3. If you could ask Santa for one, completely decadent wish for yourself, what would it be?

Hmmm…one wish for myself would be the next entire year to be drama free!! But if you are talking material things……hhmmmm….how about a nice long trip to Italy and Greece, filled with wine, olives and good cheese!?

4. How do you make the holidays special without spending any money?

We started a tradition when the kids were small. We  put  our jammies on, and warm slippers, climb in the car one night before Christmas and drive around looking at the Christmas lights. I guess if you count that we usually stop for hot chocolate, we do some “some” money but very little. They kids, even now as teens, still ask when we are going.

5. What games did you play with your family growing up?

The only thing I really remember, that was played when I was smaller was pinochle at family holidays. My sister and I used to call it pig-a-nuckle. When we got older, we played game after game of Rummy 500 or Uno with my grandmother. When I was in high school I used to go over almost every saturday and we would play two handed pinochle, or Trivia Pursuit.  She was the only one who ever really took the time to sit down and play with us most of the time.  I do also remember, my other grandparents had a dice bowling game that we used to play with each other when we were there.

6. What holiday tradition have you carried on from your own childhood? 

I really don’t remember anything we did regularly for a “tradition” as a kid. We wound up at my grandparents for dinner at every holiday….we don’t even usually do that now.  I hope I have started plenty of tradition for my kids.

7. Where would you go for a Christmas-away-from-home trip?

Disney! I would love to see the holiday decorations. Or NYC. I think that would be cool at Christmas. Just me and hubby? Some place WARM!  

8. Check out GameStop (link to: http://bit.ly/gamestop10) and tell us, what are the three top items on your GameStop Wish List this year?

In which I wallow…..

Oh yeah.

My blog.

 

Let’ s put my frame

of mind into reference -

my camera has not been out of the bag since Halloween.

Yeah.

Two full weeks ago.

All year, I have wrestled and fought against the wallowing.

The last year, since last fall, have been challenging to say the least.

Starting with my finally starting appropriate therapy for my hip and leg as a result of the accident the year before…..

The first hint of K’s melt downs and depression, in which I let everyone convince me was “normal teenage crap”….

Sir Fartsalot got his first new job in 20 years,

I took on a second job in November, and worked both for the next few months…..

Sir Fartsalot “suprises” me with yet another new job change I think it was in March, I don’t quite remember.

Along with that comes another new insurance, etc.

K starts cutting and having more melt downs in I think April….

So by May I was getting used to my new job, when I finally did leave home care completely. So totally new job change for me,

I was adjusting to working two nights a week, managing melt downs on my cell phone in the storage room if I wasn’t home for one, taking K to therapy one night a week and still trying to finish up my weight loss group one night a week.

yeah, I know, many many women do it, and do it well…..

Frankly, I started unraveling at the seams. But fought it.

The end of school came, I graduated from weight group and finally had an extra night to be home….

Disney came and went, Relay came and went, 4th of July and my nephew moving in….nothing I wouldn’t do again in a heart beat…but I did not anticipate how much would change….

and the rest of the summer is a blur.

K’s meltdowns escalate when school starts again and we finally see the adolescent psychiatrist we waited 5 months to see…..with frustrating results so far.

I am running out of steam. Finding meds that work is not going well. Side effects are horrific.

Nightmares, melt downs, rage episodes from one medicine. Wanting to sleep constantly from another.

I haven’t scrapbook since  the winter. I can’t clear my head enough to relax to do it.

Spending time together over the summer has kept us all sane I think. Trying to make some fun, and choosing to focus on that has helped.  It is getting harder and harder though. If we don’t’ find some relief for her soon, I fear I may need some medication too. we walk on egg shells anticipating the melt downs,and then there are glimpses of the old K, the smiles and bounciness,  the happy forced family fun days, that lull us into thinking things are getting better, than wham things hit me in the face again.

I wrote this post nearly exactly two years ago. I could write it again today I guess.

I have discovered who needs me for what I can do for them, and who needs me just for me.  There are a lot of days I just have no more to give and no energy for dealing with anything outside the four walls of my house. The urge to cocoon myself at times in incredible.

To say this has not been an easy year, is an understatement. I have tried to write a gratitude post on Facebook every day this month, to refocus  on the positive of my struggles. Maybe I should repost them here with some pictures. My struggles are no worse than anyone else’s, but they are mine. As I can never attest to knowing how anyone else feels, no one else can say they know how I feel, or how I should or should not deal with things.  But there are plenty giving their opinions that is for sure. (If one more person tells me I just “need some time to myself” – I will scream. Because you know what? I can’t relax enough to enjoy it,and when I get home, it is all still here) And there is no one that truly knows everything we have been through this year. There is a lot K has asked me not to share and I have to respect that.  Sir Fartsalot has tried so much to find happy fun things to do and is sending me on a gourmet food tour sunday, in which I asked him to join me, so we can spend some time doing something fun together, alone. That may help a bit.

There is a lot of happy in this year too.  And to those memories I cling, knowing we will again, find some balance. I am looking so forward to the “new” year and the promise of renewal and change. But I don’t want to wish away the holiday season either. Thanksgiving plans are already changed from our “usual”, much to Sir Fartsalot dismay and the family I was hoping to see, and made the arrangements to see, can now not be here. Yet another disappointment in the year.

There you have it, my 5 minutes in which  I allow myself to wallow.

Onward and upward, where else is there to go? Hopefully, I will unwrap myself soon.

Ten on Tuesday

1. A feeble middle aged attempt at “pictures of yourself with your camera at the end of your arm” – why do the teenagers always look so cute when they do it?

2. Is anything more annoying than those men manning those lotion/make up kiosks at the mall, when they chase you down, after politely say no thank you to their first, “Miss, can I ask you a question?” -

 

3. I want to continue to convince myself this is a reflection on my lens, but each time I look at it the doubt creeps in…..

4.  My big toe joint hurts. has been before, but now won’t give it up. Those sensible shoes are looking better and better, but the thing is I wear sneakers or flats most of the time, I don’t  exactly live in heels! had to put the cute mary jane murrell's back on teh shelf today. *sob*

5. Been feeling a bit like this lately. He fell off the table once and had to be surgically repaired…..the wind took it upon itself to finish the job a few days later. :(

6. The kids did a much better job than I!

7. I need new pants, and they are HARD to find. This time last year I was still doing home care and living in track pants and white t’s. Now I have to *dress* – ugh. but let’s see – Medicare just instituted major cuts to Outpatient therapy funding, maybe I will be back in homecare soon!

8. If you ever need to identify K’s body, just look for her foot prints on the inside of mine of Dad’s windshield. She seems to like to prop her feet up there…..neither of us can bring ourselves to clean them off. There is something to sweet about it….yet, so gross at the same time….

9. *sigh*

(and of course – after his illness earlier this month – was the ONLY one to find a tick when we got home )

10. I was wrong, last year wasn’t our last year of trick or treating ! YAY!  I think they both look fabulous, and the old fashioned invisible man was a hit. K even went to work dressed like this! Everyone loved it! I do have a soft spot for both of them.