Race day preparations

The kids and I went to Wichita this afternoon to get our packets for tomorrow's 5K. We all got tshirts, shoe timers, and our numbers.

The race starts at 8:00am. We have to be there by 7:30. So we have to leave here by 6:45 to make sure that we can find a place to park.

I'm nervous. Not going to lie on that one. I'm always nervous before a race. The boys are staying here with The Dude and have been threatened with various punishments if they give him any grief whatsoever before we get back home, which should be by 10:00 at the latest. He's still not feeling 100% so I have more motivation than ever to run my butt off and get done quickly so that we can get back here.

My best time on a 5K so far is 41:43. The last one I did I got a 42:29. I'm hoping to beat my best time, but as usual I'll just be happy to finish vertically and not in a bodybag. ;)

I'll post the results as soon as I know them, but the official results usually aren't posted until later in the day.

I'm actually going to attempt to get a good night's sleep tonight - we'll see how that works.

Time for me to brag...

We had parent/teacher conferences for the older 3 kids today. After I picked the boys up from their schools, we flew to the conferences.

Although, I do have to say that after driving the She-Beast for so long, I constantly listen for strange sounds when I'm driving. As I was tearing along, I heard this sound. A very strange thwack thwack thwack coming from the right side of the van. I checked the dash - no strange lights. I jiggled the steering wheel - felt ok. Thwack thwack thwack...it kept going. I slowed down a bit, and so did the noise.

Crap. I'm already running late. If I pull over to check and it's nothing, I'm going to be really late. What do I do?

Suddenly I looked down at the floorboard in front of the front passenger seat and I saw Daniel's backpack laying there. I started to realize what the sound was. I carefully reached down to grab the backpack, and it wouldn't budge. Sure enough, I had closed the strap in the door. Mystery solved.

Full speed ahead at that point.

We got to the conferences with about 30 seconds to spare. They all went well. Out of the 3 kids, there were maybe 2 B's and the rest were all A's. They are model students, performing above grade level in almost every area. The teachers had nothing but wonderful things to say about all of them.

It's time like that when I realize that we must be doing something right. Thankfully Ex1 and I have gotten to a point where we can communicate better about everything that is happening and we have gotten into a good routine with the kids. While splitting custody is never ideal, we are making it work - and today helped to prove that.

I just can't wait to get to the point that we can move - if we stick to our current plan, that will happen no later than the summer of 2013. At that point, all of my kids will be going to school in the same district, and life will be so much easier on all of us, but most importantly it will be easier for the kids. They won't have to get up so early to get to school when they're with me, and they'll get home earlier. It's a smaller town where I won't have to worry so much about letting the kids go outside to play without me being on them every single second, and they'll be able to walk to their friends' houses easier. It'll just be better for everyone. I would love to be able to do it now, but we have to get some bills paid off first. It's frustrating, but having that goal in mind is keeping me focused on what I need to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Yay! Tulips!

More yardwork

Today was another crazy day.

Ran kids back and forth to school.
Walked/jogged/ran a little over 5 miles (without a faceplant this time).
Did some cleaning and laundry (surprise!).

But the big project of the day was tackling our picnic area beside the house. It got inundated with leaves over the winter.

I went and picked up The Dude's mother and brought her over to my house for the afternoon so that we could hang out together for a while - something that we don't get to do very often. We raked up all most of the leaves and got them bagged to get rid of them. I didn't get the area perfectly clean - that's a losing battle - but I got the worst of it done.

We ran the bags of leaves out to the landfill and got rid of them and then picked the boys up from school before I took her back home. Then it was time to come back and deal with the usual Wednesday night chaos. Supper, baths, older 3 off to church with their father, homework, bed, dishes, etc....and then I found myself making enchiladas at 9:30pm for tomorrow's supper since I have parent/teacher conferences tomorrow afternoon for the older 3 kids.

But the good thing is that while I was getting the kitchen cleaned up, I got the kids' lunches packed for tomorrow, so the morning should go a little bit smoother than it usually does. All I have to do is toss the food into their lunch boxes and they're done.

I still have a million things to do - seems like no matter what I do, I never get caught up with anything. Next week is Spring Break for the kids, so no school all week - it'll be nice to not have to do so much running around, but it's also going to be hectic in its own special way. Ex1 and I are switching some days around so that he can take the older 3 kids camping later in the week, so our whole schedule is going to be "off" - but we'll make the most of it. The girls are still looking forward to doing the 5K on Saturday, and I'm still hoping that The Dude and I can figure out a plan for the boys so that I can do it too.

Never a dull moment....no matter how hard I try.

Spring has sprung....already?

It seems a little early to be getting out to do yardwork, but honestly, I'm not complaining.

The peonies are starting to poke through the dirt, which makes me extremely happy. Some of these initially came from my aunt's house, and were transplanted to my parents' house, and then were transported from Pennsylvania to Kansas and were transplanted at my old house, and then were transplanted to this house. They have a lot of miles on them, and I don't want to lose them. My aunt died in 2000, so even if I kill off every other plant that I own (highly likely), I don't want to kill the peonies. Aunt Doris would probably roll over in her grave and pop me upside the head if I killed them - I'm not taking any chances. Just sayin'.

OK, yeah, they're pretty and all that. But do they really have to grow everywhere? Seriously - they're in the middle of the yard. Not in the flowerbed. I've tried to dig them up and they're impossible to get rid of - trust me, I've tried. I don't even really like them in the flowerbed because they just seem to take over everything. If they'd just stay in one happy little patch, they wouldn't annoy me so much.

And of course, what would springtime be without these? Unlike most people, I really don't mind them. I think it's because our yard was full of dandelions when I was growing up, and seeing them just reminds me of a time when things were so much simpler than they are now.

But anyway, I got out there today and just started clearing out the flowerbeds. They were full of leaves and garbage and dead sticks and whatnot. I didn't really weed, except for the one bed of irises, which had been totally overtaken by some horrendous weed - but luckily it was pretty easy to pull. I didn't do a stellar job on any of it - just basically enough to make a difference and to make it look a little less ugly.

So, it looks better out there. Tomorrow's mission is going to be to bag up the 87 bags' worth of leaves in the area where our picnic table is and get those out to the landfill - that's going to be a fun, dirty, nasty, itchy job. But, for the most part, once it's done, it's done. Any leftovers after tomorrow can get raked out into the yard and chopped up with the mower when it's finally time to bust that bad boy out of the garage. That's assuming that we actually get rain this year - I think I mowed a grand total of 3 times last year. Maybe 4.

I did actually finally bust out the sewing machine tonight too and got some work done on a couple of projects. I have way too many projects and ideas either in my head, started, or almost finished, and I just need to get to work on all of them and get them done, one way or another.

I also have a couple of parts that I need to get for the van to fix a couple of annoying things - started getting prices on those today, but found out that I can get the one online for about half of the price of the place here in town - so next time I get money I get to do that. Woohoo.

I'll just keep making lists and working on them in my spare time. Ha. Glad I got so much sleep over the past few days!

Attack of the killer mom

I've been having issues with pests in my house.

No, not the kids. This time.

I'm talking about 4- and 6-legged pests. Mice and ants. I have a standing rule in my house - if it has more than 2 legs and wasn't invited to come in, it will die. Some call it cruel and heartless, but I just can't stand any unwanted critters. I'm not afraid of them, and I don't jump up on a chair when I see a mouse, but I will kill them.

I found the telltale signs of mice in one of my cabinets a few days ago, and since then two unfortunate rodents have exited the house in garbage bags to meet their maker in the great landfill. As it turned out, upon further inspection, I realized that there was a huge gap in the back of the cabinet where the floor of it didn't meet the back wall - so that's where they were coming in to do their dirty work.

I've also had issues with ants ever since we moved into this place. I guess they're the "sugar ant" variety - little tiny black things that just will not go away, no matter how many traps I put on the counters. I scrub the counters daily to make sure that there are no crumbs, and within minutes, they're back. I've tried every home remedy from baby powder to cinnamon, and nothing would get rid of them. So, although I try to use the natural stuff whenever I can, I knew that it was time to declare chemical war.

I made a quick trip to the hardware store today and $10 later emerged with a can of ant spray and a can of spray-in foam goo stuff.

Everything came off of the counters and I soaked the counters with the ant spray - at this point, I didn't care if the counters disintegrated - the ants were going to die. There's a tiny little gap between the counter and the backsplash, and I suspect that they might be coming in through there, so it got a heavy shot along the entire length of it.

I have to admit that I enjoyed a bit of sadistic pleasure watching the ants shrivel up and die the instant the spray touched them - so sue me. They're in my territory. I let that soak for a while and then wiped down the counters and put everything back.

Then I started working on the gaps in the cabinets. I had never used that spray-in goo before, so that was kind of interesting. I wasn't quite prepared for how much it would expand - but it certainly sealed up the gaps.

When I got done with that and got everything put away, I used more of the spray-in goo in the bathroom, where someone decided that it would be smart to leave about a 1" gap between the bottom of the walls and the floor - so that's all filled in now too, but I have to go around with a knife and trim it up so that it looks a little bit better. I sprayed more ant spray in the bathroom and all around the baseboards in the kitchen, so hopefully, all of my pests will now be gone....

And at least my kitchen is somewhat clean too.

Turned out to be a pretty productive day, after getting zero sleep due to a kid puking all night long....but we did take a nice long nap together this morning so that helped to rejuvenate me a little bit. The weather is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous tomorrow so I'm going to try to maybe do some work outside and go for a run at some point so that I can prepare a little more for this 5K on Saturday - although I'm running into a potential issue with finding someone to watch the boys since The Dude is still having issues with his neck. But, I'll figure something out and everything will work out in the end.

I might lose what little bit of sanity I have left before that happens....but that's nothing new!

Don't judge me.

Here's a news flash for everyone. I know it might come as a shock to some people.

I'm not perfect.

I have made so many mistakes in my life - we all have, haven't we?

Mistakes are a part of life, and there are so many ways that we can handle them.

We can learn from them, and not make the same mistake again.
We can use what we learned to make sure that our loved ones don't do the same thing.
We can make them a few times just to make sure that they were really mistakes before we learn from them.
We can even pretend that we didn't make the mistakes and act like everything is ok, when in all actuality, it isn't.

Or, my all-time favorite thing to do with a mistake (made by someone else, of course) is to judge a person for her mistakes. (I hope you sense the sarcasm on that...)

Think about it...

We aren't perfect. We've all made mistakes. Right?

So we see someone else make a mistake. It happens, right?

But instead of supporting that person while she regains her footing on the ground that has slipped out from under her, we judge that person. We ridicule that person. We call her a bad person, or worse yet, a bad mother. Instead of keeping our opinions to ourselves, we voice them, and we hurt her. We cause her to doubt herself. We don't go back to her and ask her for her side of the story so that we may better understand her actions - instead, we cut her out of our life.

We pretend that she doesn't exist anymore.

We exclude her from everything.

Why? Because she wasn't perfect, and may not have handled a situation the way that we would have wanted her to do it. But...maybe, just maybe, she had her reasons for handling it that way. Maybe it went way deeper than what we saw on the surface. But we will never know the reasons unless we ask.

At the same time, after we've cut her out of our lives, maybe she's learned from her mistakes. Maybe she's become a better person. Maybe she's even become stronger than she ever was, stronger than we ever gave her credit for being.

Maybe someday, we will find out her reasoning for doing what she did - if we choose to ask her about it. And maybe, she won't be as judgmental of us as we were of her.

A step back in time...

I made a little mini road trip today to go see my friend who was going to stay with us. I don't remember if I said this or not, but she ended up getting hooked up with an apartment that is closer to some extended family in another town. I had gotten some stuff together for her, so the boys and I went down there today for a quick visit since I'm still not feeling so hot.

Anyway, her kids had been wanting to go to a shop right down the street from her apartment because there is always a cat in the window when they walk past it. So we went.

It was a record store. A real-life record store.

They had records...and cassettes...and CD's....and even record players! It was so cool and we could have easily spent hours in there just browsing, but the kids weren't having any of that. Most of the records were in the $1-5 price range, with the "expensive" ones being around $12 or so. The cassettes were 99 cents. I didn't notice the CD prices - I was too busy oohing and aahing over the records.

One of these days, when I have more time and less kids, I'm going to go back down there so that I can actually shop. When we get back to my parents' house in June, I have to see if my old record player is still there - I'm almost positive that my kids have never seen a record or have any idea how they even work *gasp*.

They have no idea what they're missing.