Take a Picture It Lasts Longer!!

Been suffering for the last three weeks with a horribly wicked case of Ulcerative colitis. I've lived with it for 15 years and every year or two I have a flare up. Usually when we move or something like that that has me under a large amount of stress.

I thought I had skated through this last move sans flare up until I got sick at the beginning of the Summer and had to go through not one but TWO rounds of antibiotics. Well any chance I had of avoiding a flare up went out the window at the point. 

The flare up began and has progressively gotten worse, to the point that I have been somewhat house bound. I finally got in to see a GI doctor yesterday and he told me what I already knew. This is a bad one, one that has spread up into my large intestine and is going to require a truck load of steroids just to get under control. Damn!! I hate steroids!! Last time I had to use them I blew up like a balloon and my face resembled that of a blow fish... not pretty.

So I have decided to take full advantage of the 10 pound weight loss that has come along with shitting my brains out a dozen or more times a day and take a few pictures of my thinner self. Now we can all remember how cute I am now for in the near future we will be loving a girl that will resemble a blow fish. No offense to blow fish... they are adorable.

The Day I Saved Molly

Yesterday I had lunch with the "ladies". It was fun, I a nice lunch, chatted and held a newborn for two wonderful hours.

After being in the house for a few days, I felt the need to put a dress on and get slightly dolled up. I had a cute sun dress on that has a square neckline and perhaps showed a tiny bit more cleavage than I usually reveal but I felt good in it so I went for it.

As I'm holding the newborn in my arms, one of my friends looks over at me and says, "Um the china is coming out of the cabinet" what?? I look at her and then realize what she is saying. " put the china back in the cabinet" OK!! Fine so I pull up the top of my dress to cover up the boobs that this baby has revealed by holding onto my dress with his tiny fist. Another Southern ism... the china stays in the cabinet and is only brought out on special occasions. Whatever.

 So I'm driving home and I drive by my neighbors house and I notice her dog laying under a tree in an empty lot panting like a wild dog. This dog is like 197 years old and I know for a fact that her Momma doesn't leave  her outside when she's not home. I get home and text her and tell her that Molly is laying under a tree in another neighbors yard.

She calls me and says that she accidentally left her out and could I please go get her and put her back in the house. I say No problem!

So  I change my clothes into shorts and a t-shirt and walk over to where I last saw the dog. It is 94 degrees out and about 90% humidity and I leave my sunglasses at home. I consider getting on my bicycle but think that this will only take a moment and why bother so I head out on foot. I walk over to where I saw Molly last and of course she is gone.

I start an all out search for this dog who I forgot to mention is practically totally deaf and can't hear the 500 times that I am calling her name.. " Molly" " Molly" "Molly"

I realize that I am an idiot and why am I even calling her because she can't hear me anyway. I walk all over and around her house to no avail. Can't find the damn dog anywhere. She has disappeared since I went home to change my clothes. Crap... now what?

I walk over to my friends house and let myself in and give her a ring in her car." sorry, can't find the dog but if I find her I'll bring her home and put her in the house for you" She says thanks and is horrified that I am walking the neighborhood looking fer her 250 year old deaf dog.

After a while of searching in the beastly heat, I give up and decide to head towards home. I figure if she shows up then I'll take her back.

 As I am walking toward home I look into another neighbors open garage and there lying on the garage floor is Molly. Panting like a mad dog. I start clapping and calling her and she begins to hobble toward me. Molly suffers from a very bad case of some sort of arthritis or something so when she walks she looks like she's been hit by a car. So she tries to walk towards me and she can barely walk so I lean down to scoop her up. Mind you she is a yellow lab and VERY furry. I scoop her up and get an enormous mouth full of dog hair flying everywhere. I can't wipe the hair off of my face because I have this dog in my arms so I start to spit and blow in an attempt to get the 50,000 hairs off of my dace and lips. Didn't work.

I carry her all the way home, spitting and puffing at the dog hair all over me and put her in her house and get her a fresh bowl of water, the put her on the sofa and turn the ceiling fan on high for her. She can't stop panting, she's so hot. She has been locked outside in the heat for four hours. 

My friend is horrified that she accidentally left the dog out but even more so she is mortified that I had to go and find her and carry her home. 

All I can think of is that I see that her kitchen is full of last night dinner dishes and that thank GOD she is normal!! Every time we go over there her kitchen is immaculate and I spend the whole time wondering how she keeps her kitchen so clean and why I can't seem to do the same. 

I walk home with a smile on my face.

I am happy to have been there to save Molly's life and even happier to see that my friend is normal like me and that she too has dirty dishes from last nights dinner still sitting in her sink too!

BTW The dog hair is still lingering on me, I just know it.

Survived the Week

Well, we survived the first week of school, mostly unscathed. Only a few minor bumps and bruises along the way. 

The first day, Indy comes home from her new little friends house ( new neighbor) holding a plate  with a large piece of a cookie cake.

I asked about it and she says that Kearsten's Mom got her kids a cookie cake for surviving the first day of school.

Oh shit.

Of course the next thing out of my little punks mouth is " how come you didn't get us a cookie cake Mom?"

I cringe and come up with the most brilliant answer that I can think of on the fly...

"Because I was waiting till the end of the week so we could celebrate you guys surviving your first week of school." ( I rock!!)

She seemed to be perfectly fine with that answer and I got away with not looking too bad in my little punks eyes.

I immediately go over to my cell phone and text my new " friend" and tell her that if she ever pulls one of those " super Mom" stunts again without telling the rest of us losers then there's gonna be some serious trouble.

Yea she's been riddled with guilt all week. ha!

So yesterday I went out and bought the cookie cake.

What did they learn this week? Alex learned to keep his mouth shut when his teacher says NO talking, even when his class mate asks him a question. 

Ari learned what it felt like to have to wait outside in the 90 degree heat on the pavement before school and how it felt to get overheated and nauseated even before the first bell rang.

The Vice principle got to know me. Yea it was OK. I just had to make sure that they know NOT to mess with the Mama Bear's cubs so early in the school year.

Even had the support of last years teacher behind me as I muddled through the waters of the Vice Principals office.

All is all it was a good week and Most of all I LOVED having some quiet in the house even though we had a wonderful Summer.

P.S. If you get a Cookie cake for your kids please give your neighbor friends a heads up so they won't look like losers!!

Firsts and A Haircut

Today was the first day of school for my kids. I can't believe how much they have grown... literally and figuratively!!

Ari started her sophomore year , Alex is in 4th, and Indy started 2nd grade.

Even more exciting... I had the entire day to myself!! Yay for me!! I really enjoyed watching the news

 and then cleaning up the huge mess upstairs in the kids rooms leftover from the weekend.  

Last year my kids were the only ones being picked up by the bus at our stop. Since then... we have eight new neighbor kids that are all roughly the same age as our kids. Super fun!!

 

So I walked upstairs this morning to straighten up and this is what I found...

 

Yes... Barbie heads on a dinner plate.

 It seams that Indy and her BFF Anna had a bit of a Hair Salon day and gave all the Barbies a haircut.

Some of them got a "shag" haircut

One got a Mohawk and what seems to be a bang trim gone bad.

And my personal fav... an updated "Bob" with multi layered tiers... sort of like a three tiered wedding cake.

Annie Get Your Gun

This past week was hard. Ted was in Boston all week for meetings and that leaves me home alone with three punks and two dogs. Not usually a problem and it really wasn't this week either but Im finally doing a tiny bit of interior design work and I had some of that to take care of as well.

I was in my office painting some lettering to go on the wall of my eight year old client when my neighbor Alicia showed up. She is what I call a Southern tomboy. She grew up in Alabama and is the one lonely sister to three or four brothers. She is Kick ASS!!  My kids and husband LOVE her, her awesome husband and son too. So she stops by with her son and comes into my office to hang out with me while I paint. First thing she says is " Dude... your office is disgusting", I'm like What? It's not that bad, I just haven't straightened up in a while.( like ever!)

"Dude this is a hot mess. I couldn't work in this chaos" She's totally pulling a "Stephanie" on me. I have finally met my match. She just calls it like she see's it. I LOVE it. I wasn't offended at all. Next she cruises into the garage where she continues on her OCD cleanliness rampage and tells me how nasty our garage is. Dude... like I don't already know it. Ted hates it when the garage is messy  but hasn't had the time to sweep and shop vac it out. She asks if I will give her permission to clean out the garage and make it look pretty, I tell her she's a freak but go ahead... do whatever blows your freakin skirt up you FREAK!

The next day Ted is home and I run out the door first thing in the morning to take Ari to volleyball when Alicia shows up with her son and starts to sweep out the garage. Ted is home and already pissey because we are out of milk so he can't have his cereal. In my defense we were technically NOT out of milk but the full gallon we did have expired that day and when I went to pour it in my coffee I realized that it tasted like crap so I dumped it down the drain. Nasty.

Alicia continues to sweep and straighten the garage when Ted walks out in his suit to go to work. He's like..."what the Hell are you doing to my garage?" Alicia loves Ted so she just explains to him that she needs something to do and since her own house is so freaking clean, she is looking for someone elses house to clean. He tells her she's a freak and heads off to work. Whew! Crisis avoided. ( he doesn't like other people doing things for him that he can do himself)

Two Days later after a clean office and a clean garage, the kids are playing outside in the steam. ( the yard) when Indy runs in and tells me that there is a snake outside and to come quickly. I do what any other self respecting housewife does in this situation... I grab my cell phone and run out the door with a dish towel on my shoulder. When I get outside and am able to determine that it is indeed a poisonous snake I do the next sensible thing... I call Alicia and her husband Curry and tell them to come quickly and get this snake out of our yard. She always tells me that if I see a poisonous snake to just call her and she come down with her shot gun and take care of it. So I get my tall rainboots on to protect my ankles and keep my eye on the snake ( from a safe distance) so I can point it out to Curry when he gets here. Like twenty three minutes later they finally show up. First they stop and chat with Ted and then finally head on over to me where I am still standing in the tall grass with my dish towel over my shoulder and my rainboots on trying not to loose sight of this beautiful diamond head snake.

When Curry arrives to the spot where I am standing... I get a good look at what he is carrying. I shall show you a picture so you can get the full effect.

Yes... that's a glass of red wine in one hand and a gun in the other. Oh by the way... That's his son standing next to him. Curry tells me that the snake isn't big enough to shoot. HIs son Alex starts to cry. I ask Curry why he is crying and he tells me that he is crying because he didn't get to shoot anything.

They spend the next half an hour harrassing me for worrying about a tiny little poisonous snake. He tells me about the Godzilla of a snake that was in the road the other night that was as big around as his forarm... Now that's the kind of snake you gotta shoot before he gets ahold of one of the kids.

Another neighbor rolls up in her golf cart with her two babies in the seat with her. The 9 month old in her lap and the two year old sitting next to her while she drives. She takes one look at Curry's hand gun and say's " Nice girl gun".

Yea that's how we roll down here in the deep South. The three most inportant things to a southerner...

"God, Guns and Football" That's about it in a nutshell. And wine of course.

NOT ME MONDAY

This is gonna be a day late because of operation beautiful but I have to narc on myself..

I did NOT just finish cleaning my sons room that was so loaded with dust that i was sneezing the entire time. It has NOT been seven months since I took every little teeny tiny "treasure" off of his book shelves, desk and night stand and actually wiped down all the filthy surfaces in his room. 

I am certainly Not that bad of a house keeper and I certainly clean the rest of the house much more often than that! I swear I totally do!! It's just that I run away screaming every time I even think about having to go in there and move all of that Crap off of the shelves.

I did NOT Purge a bunch of stuff when he wasn't looking just to do a bit of de-cluttering. I  would never do that.

I most certainly do NOT have any plans to do even more purging after school starts. I have the utmost respect for my kids and their CRAP treasures and would never get rid of their stuff without asking.

NO not me.

Operation Beautiful

Good Morning my dear friends and readers. As I was skimming through my daily blogs that I like to read when I came across one that is most certainly worth sharing..

A message we should all be teaching , not only our daughters but our sons as well.

When I was in high school I was 5'10" and VERY skinny. I had a dancers body, a washboard stomach and legs that went on for days. I thought I wasn't pretty enough, I thought I was fat.

It was only after I started having children that I realized what a distorted self image I had. Now as I sit here 30 years later, three kids, and several cross country moves under my belt and a few pounds heavier, (OK more than a few pounds but we're not gonna talk about that now are we?) I realize that my body, no matter what size it is has carried me through some major life struggles, birthed three kids (big ones!) nursed for a total of 27 months and moved 5 times in 6 years. Whew!! And it's only 2010!!
I watch as my teenager is reminded that she is NOT the size of some of her petite tiny little friends and I am constantly reminding her that she does NOT come from petite people and that her ancestors were in part from Eastern Europe (Poland , Slovakia) who worked all day on the farm and killed and cooked all the meals, some were Vikings and some were Oklahoma farmers.  I remind her that her beautiful legs, though not tiny will hold her steady when she makes those kills at the Volleyball net. They will help keep her injury free and solid for as long as she wants if she keeps them strong.

Lets all spend a little time each day to remind our kids that what and how we treat people is more important than how we look. Teach them to be of service and that giving is a whole lot more fun than getting.
Beauty is not skin deep but goes much further into our soul. Some of the most beautiful people I know are not beautiful because of their outer shell but because of the light that they spread to people around them.

spread the message and keep it moving!!
Life is good.

Oh yea one more thing...

You are beautiful just the way you are!!!

Pass it on.