Checking things off....

Today was a crazy busy day.

I managed to get the entire front flowerbed weeded, which was more of a challenge than I had thought it was going to be - but it's done and shouldn't be completely overrun with weeds before we get back from vacation.

Hopefully at some point there will be more flowers in there than dirt, but until everything that I planted establishes itself, it's going to continue to look relatively pathetic.

After I got done with that and got a shower, I took Alex and Daniel into town for their very first official eye exams. I figured that since the older three kids now all wear glasses, I might as well get these guys checked out too.

Luckily, we escaped from that appointment without any new glasses - which actually disappointed the boys. I, however, did a happy dance on the way out the door.

We then ran a ton of errands - stopped at a paint store to pick up some paint chips for a friend, ran to the library to make a whole ton of copies of stuff for Scouts for a big recruitment thing this weekend, got the oil changed in the van, grabbed some (late) lunch, picked up a few things at the store, got gas, stopped and got a new air filter for the van, and then came home to keep working on clearing the fabric pile out of the garage.

Oh. The air filter.

The oil change place wanted $35 to put a new air filter in the van. I might have laughed at the poor kid who was working there when he told me the price. So I bought one (granted, it's still a stupid expensive filter) and changed it myself when we got home.

In the meantime, The Dude went to get the Scout trailer to bring it over here and stash it in my garage as we had planned. I was still out there going through the fabric and suddenly a thought came to me - I walked to the open garage door and reached up and touched the top of the opening with my hand without even stretching (and I'm short). I pulled up the pictures of the trailer on my phone and tried to judge the height of it.

My fear was right.

So now, the garage is cleaned out for a trailer that's sitting in my driveway. Because that's my luck. But the latch has been repaired and it's here and safe for the time being, and I'll work on going through all of the stuff over the next few days and get that all sorted out.

But.....other than balancing the checkbooks and washing the rest of the fabric (those are at the bottom of the list) I've gotten everything done that I set out to do today.

That means one thing - time to make tomorrow's list.

I'm so ready for vacation.....3000 miles in a vehicle with 5 kids will be a cake walk after this week.

Strength

So for the past week or so, I've been busting my butt to replace the flooring in my laundry/bath and beyond. It's been a long, drawn-out job for so many reasons.

I've done the majority of the job myself. The kids have helped out here and there, and The Dude popped in and out when he could, but the vast majority of it has been me plugging away, usually late at night after the kids were in bed. It's been strenuous and draining and just overall not very easy.

The bulk of the job is done. The washer and dryer are back in place, but the toilet is still sitting on the side porch, waiting to be put back in its spot. Edging needs to be done between the tile and carpet, and there are 4 doors that have to be trimmed and rehung, among a host of other little piddly jobs.

I'm tired.

I got up and made breakfast this morning, but after I cleaned the kitchen I went out to the living room and curled up on the loveseat and I fell asleep. And I slept off and on for most of the day. I got up a couple of times to go to the bathroom or get something to drink, but that was it.

At one point I got up long enough to flip a load of laundry and cook some chicken - but only because I was starting to feel guilty for being so lazy.

The whole time I kept thinking to myself - people always tell me how they think I'm so strong. They admire what I'm able to do for myself.

Strong. Independent. Non-stop.

Today, I felt anything but strong. My body hurts. My hands ache so much that opening a new bottle of soda brought me to tears. Typing this is painful.

I felt anything but independent, because all I wanted was for someone - anyone - to come to the house and help. Someone to take the kids out to do something. Someone to do some laundry for me. Someone to hand me some food that I didn't have to make.

Non-stop was definitely not in my vocabulary today. I stopped. I crashed. I slept. I moped at how crappy I feel. I watched videos that made me cry and allowed myself to feel the relief of letting go.

I get so tired of always being strong. It's exhausting. It's overwhelming.

It's not always empowering. It's not always a good thing. And for so many people, it's not a choice - it's a way to survive life, one task at a time.

And sometimes, being strong means admitting that we are weak and we need help. Sometimes it's admitting that we're an emotional mess and we really don't have our act together. Sometimes it's just admitting that we need to recharge before we can do one more thing.

I'm tired. I can't do it all.

And that's ok.

One of those days....

Today has just not been fun. Seriously.


It took me a while to even get motivated, but once I did I finally started working on my shower some more. Luckily, the tile on this wall doesn't have to be cut to size at all, so it went fairly fast once I got started. But, getting all of the tile work done is going to take forever and at this point, I just want it to be done. I want my shower back. But of course, once I get the shower done, we have to redo the floor - it's a neverending battle at this point.

(And in case you're wondering about the crazy tile - the light blue tile is what was in there originally. I pulled that off, and I'm putting it back. However, some broke in the process and we couldn't find the same lovely shade of baby blue. So we bought a couple of boxes of white to mix in with the blue. Rather than try to make a perfect pattern, I just opted to go with a random one.)

Once I decided I was done working on the shower for the day (as in - once I ran out of the mortar I had mixed) it was time to run to the grocery store for a few things. Right about then my phone rang, and I had to run and pick up a "sick" kid from school. I say "sick" - I think I got snowed on that one. Live and learn. We went to the grocery store, got what we needed, ran through the carwash and came home.

Once the other kids got home, the chaos just escalated - and boy, did it escalate.

Crappy attitudes. Temper tantrums. Whining. Fighting. Arguing. Slamming doors. Neighbor kids coming over to play and doing stupid stuff so that I had to yell at them too. Constant yells of "Mom!! I need _____!!" or "Mom! He said _____!" or "Mom! She _______!" One kid flipping another kid the bird. One falling off of a bed (after jumping on it) and getting hurt. Vomit. Weird bug crawling across the dining room floor.

Nights like this get to me. I know that they happen, and I know that they're inevitable, but holy crap do they make me feel completely and totally inadequate. I count down the minutes until bedtime, and I feel guilty because I'm not all mushy-gushy and "oh I love my kids so much and every minute is precious and rainbows and unicorns and happy happy yay!!"

Instead, it's "holy hell it's only 30 minutes until bedtime and then it'll be quiet and then all I have to do is get through the morning and get them to school and then I can get stuff done".

A big part of it is stress. The next few days are absolutely jam-packed with stuff, from track meets to a field trip to choir concerts to baseball practice to The Great Strides Walk for Cystic Fibrosis to the half-marathon, and I have no adult backup at all because The Dude is going to be out of town. I'm worried about making it to everything and attempting to stay sane, and then worrying about whether or not the house is still going to be standing if I leave the kids on their own Sunday morning while I go to my race.

For now though, I'm just going to chill. It's been a crappy night, yes. But it's not the end of the world. It happens. Instead of freaking out, I'm going to enjoy a glass of wine and some "baby oranges" (in a very worn and nasty looking - but clean - bowl) and listen to some music and play around online, and then I'm going to go to bed knowing that tomorrow is another day. And with any luck, it'll go smoother than today did.

The house and stuff

As a continuation of the questions that people asked the other night, I figured I'd go with the topic of the house.

Honestly, this whole I Now Own A House thing is still so surreal. I catch myself smiling as I drive down the street toward it, thinking "Hey, that's a pretty cool house over there on the corner. Well, would you look at that? It's mine." Seriously. I have conversations in my head like that on a regular basis.

"I'm going to stroll down my hallway into my bedroom past my walk-in closet and go to my bathroom to use my toilet." Then I sit on the toilet and look around and think "Yeah, I think I'm going to rip this tile out of here and just paint the walls - because you know, it's MINE."

"I think I'm going to rip this hideous bush out of the flowerbed and plant something else, just because I can."

"I'm going to put my garden over there. No, I want my clothesline there. The garden can go over THERE."

It's an odd feeling, this MINE thing.

But at the same time, it brings a whole host of frustrations. I had help with the actual move, as in relocating stuff from the old house to here. But that's pretty much where it ended. The Dude hasn't been able to do a whole bunch because of medical stuff, so the majority of it has been on me. For the most part, I'm ok with that. I'm a bit of a control freak about some a lot of most stuff. What's hard though is when I ask for help, and there's no one there for whatever reason. Tonight, with Alex's help (you know, the 8 year old who just had a skin graft done on Monday?) I was able to move the pool table out of the way so that I could get the floor underneath it painted - I have been trying and trying to get help with that, but .... yeah. It's moved. The floor is primed. I should be able to paint it and get the pool table put back by the end of the weekend, with or without help from a grown-up. I also pulled everything out of Jared's room and primed his floor so that I can get his room done too.

(And before any of my local friends get offended, this isn't aimed at anyone in particular. Got it?)

I still have a ton of work to do yet. I have to finish the basement, which involves a few more steps to getting the floor done, then moving the massive pile of craft stuff out of the living room and sorting it out down there, to actually getting my craft stuff set up so that I can catch up on projects whose due dates passed MONTHS ago - literally. I am desperate to get my basement done just so that I can catch up on everything and get stuff out to the people who are waiting for it.

But honestly, looking around this place makes me realize again how lucky I am. I talked the other night about how I can afford to own a house and even though I know that for at least right now, I don't have to worry about having the money to make the payment every month, I feel a responsibility to make improvements on the house to make it acceptable (in my eyes) for the kids. I have a fear that something big is going to break and I'm not going to have the money to fix it. For example, the central air is acting a little wonky right now - and I'm terrified that it's going to cost me a lot of money when realistically it's probably something stupid. But I'm doing something amazing here - I bought a house. Me. Just me. Alone. It's mine.

And that, to me, is so amazing that I can't even begin to explain. I just can't. There are no words.

At the same time though, while it's mine on paper - realistically The Dude and I bought it together. We looked at every house together and we discussed everything and made every decision as a couple. He doesn't live here - yet - but ultimately, this is going to be the home that we share. He has had a bunch of health issues over the past few months that have put some kinks in some of our plans - but the plans are still there. For now, I am doing the physical stuff - and he is my biggest and loudest cheerleader. We are working toward combining households, but there are so many things that have to happen in order to get there.

Finally for the million dollar question about whether or not we'll ever get married.....I still say never.

(If you want some background on that, you can check out this post and then this post to get the basic understanding.)

Marriage still terrifies me to no end. The Dude and I have now been together for almost 2 1/2 years, and life is good. We don't get to spend nearly enough time together for a myriad of reasons, and I'll be totally honest and admit that I've been picking fights with him - but I'm going to blame it on stress and not seeing enough of each other and stress. I get pissed, I get unreasonable and obnoxious and hateful and yell at him, and he calls me out on it and then we kiss and make up. And then I sit here and wonder "what just happened?" and "why is he still here?" Bottom line is that he IS still here - and that in and of itself is terrifying to me because it's making me think that maybe he really IS planning on sticking around for the long haul.

Even after 2 1/2 years, I'm still getting used to the idea that he's not going to walk away any time soon - but that's still not enough to convince my overly dense head that he might just stay around forever.

One day at a time. It applies to so many things right now.

Such a slacker

I haven't really posted anything for the last week or so, and most of it's because life has been so uber-chaotic again. So here are some random tidbits just to get everyone caught up....

Random sighting on the way to WalHell the other morning
to get a certain little boy his birthday present.

So Daniel turned 6 years old the other day. It's hard to believe that it's been 6 years already, but it has. 

Yes, he still sucks his thumb. We're working on it.

Birthday donuts.

Irresistible.

All he wanted was that blasted blue
soccer ball.

Recovering from birthday spankings from
The (Very Scruffy) Dude.

Delayed cake and ice cream when I could finally get
all five of them in the house at the same time.

Killing time at a park in between girls' basketball games.

Love seeing them actually getting along and not
beating the hell out of each other.

I have no words.

The park was covered in honeysuckle. Such a heavenly
scent that took me right back to my childhood.

Killing time at another park this morning.

It's never going to go away. On my blog, I can see what people
type into search engines to get here. Over the past month, these are
the most popular searches. 

And just because The Dude is so awesome, I have to say this....

He hasn't been working lately, so I've been picking up some more hours. But in order for me to work, someone has to watch the kids. By default, it's him. Without him, I wouldn't be able to do this, and I am so incredibly grateful. He has leads on a couple of jobs, so we're just waiting to hear back at this point - and then once he starts working, I won't have to put in as many hours.

So the other day, he had the boys and my phone. So he took them out to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant and caught this picture of them enjoying their chips and salsa.

And then today, while I was at work and he was keeping an eye on 4 of the kids instead of just 2, he managed to surprise me and put an end to my dish jenga days - and he fixed my broken dishwasher. I thoroughly enjoyed loading my toxic cancer-causing ugly plastic dishes into the energy-hogging inefficient water-wasting cancer-causing-dish-detergent-using dishwasher tonight instead of washing them in the sink. So sue me. I have better things to do than to wash dishes.

And we are officially on the prowl for a house. We looked at a couple today, and both of them had potential, although one had way more potential than the other. Of course, along with more potential comes more money, but.....we'll see. The realtor that we are working with seems really cool and she knows what we're looking for so we're actually going to meet her again tomorrow and look at a couple more that she thinks could possibly work. We really want to get moved before school starts in August, but I don't know if that's going to happen or not - but one way or another, we will get moved. Soon. All of my kids will be in one school district next year, or I will lose what little bit of my mind I have left.

So that's the past few days in a nutshell....hopefully things will calm down around here and I'll be able to keep up a little better.

How many times...

....did I sit down today to fold laundry?

Honestly, I lost count.

Non-Stop Dork

I got up this morning and once I got moving, I was on a mission to get some laundry done. I even donned the infamous purple bandana that usually helps to keep me motivated for some weird reason.

But I kept getting distracted. Sometimes it was my own fault, and sometimes it wasn't.

Of course, I kept watching that silly picture of my dishes that I posted last night and was again amazed at the number of people who shared it. I always find it ironic how the dumbest stuff can go viral (remember this foolishness???) but important stuff doesn't. But whatever - it is what it is.

But it also seemed like every time I turned around, the kids were yelling for something. Someone fell off of a bike. A chain fell off of a bike. Someone else fell off of a bike. The chain came off again. Someone is thirsty.  Someone's being mean to someone else. And so it went for most of the afternoon.

Then the kicker.

"Mom, the garage door is broken."

Wait, what?

Sure enough, when I went outside to look, my already ghetto-esque garage door was hanging at a funky angle. I got closer to investigate, and found that one of the wheels had broken and come out of the track, and so it was hanging there by one wheel. Very carefully, I got the door opened the rest of the way and grabbed some tools and pulled the broken wheel off of the door. Cool Neighbor came over to see what I was up to this time, and he went to his garage and pulled out an old wheel to see if it would fit, but of course it didn't. So, the kids and I loaded up in the van and took off to the hardware store.

Yeah. I need to clean that dump up soon.

$10 later, we had a new wheel. A matched set, actually. A little bit of cursing, a few ninja moves to get cobwebs out of my face, and about 30 minutes later and I had both wheels replaced.

In the 2 1/2 years that we've lived here, that door has never opened so easily. And I got it done and was able to get the door closed before some thunderstorms came rolling into the area, so that's always a plus.

But of course, while all of this was happening, I wasn't getting my laundry folded. Instead, it just kept piling up on my bed. So at the moment, Mt. Laundry is sitting behind me, patiently waiting for me to tackle it. And now that it's this late, I have no desire to do it.

However, I'm going to force myself to do it - otherwise I'll be sleeping on the couch, and honestly, I don't want to do that tonight.

Maybe I'll surprise myself and actually get it done though. We'll just have to wait and see.

Speedbumps

I'm not exactly sure what we did to deserve this.....

I blew out the head gasket in my van.
Then the water pump went out in The Dude's truck (while I was driving it).
My dishwasher crapped out on Mother's Day.
My lawnmower died the other day.

Then this evening, The Dude was out running a couple of errands, including picking up supper for us, and he called me to say that the truck had broken down. Again.

Anyway, it ended up being really minor. I took the boys, went and got him, we ran to the auto parts store and back to his house to get his tools, replaced the solenoid in the parking lot of the pizza place, and boom - back on our way again, all in less than an hour.

Still.... it's frustrating. It seems like just when we fix something - another thing breaks. Luckily this time, it was cheap and easy to fix. But I'm getting tired of fixing stuff. Besides the fact that it's generally really inconvenient, it's also getting really expensive.

We keep spending money on fixing stuff - and it's money that we're trying to put towards other stuff.

We're trying to figure out a way to make TMOART:13 happen (if you're new around here, that stands for The Mother Of All Road Trips: 2013 Edition) but at this rate - it looks like it might not. We want to rent a bigger van to do it so that the kids are more comfortable (and let's face it - if it's a rental and it breaks down, someone else has to pay to fix it) but from looking into that, a rental will easily tack another $1000-1500 to the total cost of the trip. We just might not be about to do it this year.

Even though we keep breaking stuff, we
have fun fixing it.

We're still trying to get moved so that we can have all of the kids in the same school district, and moving takes money too. Funny how that works.

But still, even though this is all so incredibly frustrating, we're still plugging along. We're still making plans (and adjusting them) and we're moving forward and we're looking into doing some other things that involve some really big steps (no, not THAT kind of a step) and all in all, no matter what, life is good. We might keep hitting speedbumps, but that's all they are - they might temporarily slow us down a bit, but they're not sending us off into some other direction.

I figure at this point that if we can deal with this much broken crap, we should be able to handle just about anything. We'll just keep going over the speedbumps, one by one.

We might lose what little bit of our minds that we have left.....but it'll just make the ride more interesting.

Too ugly not to save and other randomness...

I awoke yesterday to the sound of a crash in the kitchen. I knew that it wasn't going to be pretty as I jumped up out of bed to see (a) who did it (b) who got hurt and (c) what was destroyed.

In the half of a second that it took me to get from my bed to the kitchen I knew the answers to all three of those questions.

(a) Alex
(b) no one
(c) the candy cow

I was right.

The candy cow is a ceramic cookie jar that my mother sent to me when I was married to Ex1. It was one of *those* gifts - you know the kind that you open and then look at each other, both of you thinking "um, that's interesting" but neither one says anything.

Yeah. One of those. But, I like cows, and we needed a cookie jar, and it was cute in its own ugly way. So it made its home on top of the refrigerator, where it has always been.

When Sarah was little, she climbed up to get something out of it, and she dropped the lid on the floor. It broke into 4 or 5 large pieces that I was able to glue back together fairly easily. Of course, that was just a linoleum floor that had a little bit of cushion to it.

Unfortunately, our kitchen floor now is ceramic tile. And it's very unforgiving. So when Alex climbed up to try to swipe something out of it yesterday morning and dropped it, it ended up in more than 4 or 5 pieces.

Needless to say, I was not happy.

I contemplated throwing it away....for about 2 seconds.

And then I got out the glue - after Alex got sent to his room for an extended period of time. And I spent most of the morning piecing and gluing (and swearing and grumbling).

She's definitely showing some signs of wear after this incident. She has holes where the pieces disintegrated and couldn't be put back together again. She's missing an ear and part of a horn, but she's back on top of the refrigerator where she belongs.

After all, she's just too ugly not to save.

 Other randomness for the day....

A trip to the library that resulted in returning 19 items....and checking out another 35.....

A trip to the park that ended up with everyone being really cold and hungry after about 30 minutes...

Then a trip out to eat where we ran into a friend and got to visit with her...

Brownies and ice cream after we came home...

Movie watching with the kids...

And then some more work on a sewing project....

Not a bad day.

It was a sew-fest

So (sew?) for whatever reason, this weekend apparently became the official sewing weekend in this house.

I finished up my row to add to the rows that now get sent on to the next person...and I've already received the next set of rows that I have to add another row to and then send it off, but it can wait for a while because it's not "due" yet.

And I have to get my sewing machine serviced. Like, NOW.

But, while I was working on this, the girls decided that they wanted to sew too. I've tried to get them to do it before and they had absolutely no interest - but suddenly, the urge hit them.

And I had to fight to use my own sewing machine for the rest of the weekend.

But I really can't complain too much. They really focused on what they were working on, and even though they were using their own "techniques" at least they are showing an interest - and starting to learn the basics of using the sewing machine.

Now I just need to get my old one fixed and my new one serviced, and then it'll just be 3 people fighting over two machines instead of a single one - that got interesting a few times, especially in this tiny little sewing area.

But they had fun, there was a minimal amount of bickering, and they're learning a good skill. Whether or not they continue to use it will be totally up to them, but at least they'll have an idea of the basics.

 Sarah actually came up with some really cute ideas, so maybe she'll turn out to be the quilt designer of the family. I could handle that.

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

He spoils me.

In other news, because The Dude is so incredibly wonderful and awesome, he spent most of his weekend off under the hood of the van - yet again. I've been having some issues with it and we I thought that it needed a new thermostat. He took my word for it and starting trying to replace it, which was not as easy as it should have been. Long story short, after some more investigating, we he fixed it - or so we hope. Tomorrow morning will be the moment of truth.

And we're going to start shopping for a new van. I don't want to, but I think the time is coming - sooner than I'd like it to, darn it.

Anyway.....tomorrow, the two younger boys have school (yes, it's a holiday. yes, they have school.) but the older 3 don't - so I'm taking the two to school, and then taking Emily and Jared over to their father's house and then Sarah and I are going to spend the day together - no one else, just the two of us. We haven't decided what we're going to do yet, but there might be a run involved, and lunch somewhere (her choice). I don't get to spend nearly enough time with her, so I'm really looking forward to it. I think it'll be good for both of us at this point.

Battle

So I've been having issues with my dryer. When it works, it works great. But it's gotten to the point that it just randomly stops working. It'll be in the middle of the cycle and just quit.

In its defense, it's getting old. Ex1 and I bought it toward the beginning of our marriage, so I would say that it's probably about 12 years old. And let's face it - with the amount of laundry that I do on a daily basis, it's probably more like 175 in NSM years.

Anyway, I tore it apart today. I took the back off of it and found that the power cord was actually a little loose, and for some reason the ground wire was not attached to the body of the dryer like it was supposed to be. I have no idea how that happened. But it did. So I removed all of the wires, cleaned all of the lint out from the contacts, and put them all back together again - tightly this time.

And then I took the top of it off and cleaned as much of the lint out of the body of the dryer as I could. I don't know if that helped or not, but it certainly didn't hurt it.

I played around with the door switch a bit, and that seems to still be working fine from what I can tell - but at least if that needs to be replaced it looks like it'll be simple to do.

Anyway, I put it back together and I turned it on. And it worked. I ran a load of laundry through it, and it ran through the whole cycle and I didn't have any problems with it - although I'm quite sure that Daniel got tired of me asking him to go stand at the laundry room door and tell me if he could still hear it running or not.

Then I did another load of laundry and tossed it into the dryer. Cautiously confident, I turned it on and walked away. I went back in about 20 minutes later - and it had shut off again.

Colorful language was used. A kick was thrown. And I turned it back on again in the hopes that it will actually continue to run long enough to get that one load dried tonight.

In the meantime, I took the next load out of the washer and put it on the foolproof dryer.

I have one more theory about what might be wrong with it, and I'll deal with that tomorrow. And if I can't get it fixed, I will give up the fight. But I won't be happy about it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ On a positive note though:


Goal for the week: 15 miles. On foot. Walking with maybe a little bit of jogging, depending on how my toe feels once I get back out there again. I need to start focusing on getting ready for the next half-marathon and that is NOT going to happen if I don't get up and get off of my butt.

And now that I have the confirmation and I know that I'm officially registered, I have no choice but to get moving. I should print that out about a dozen times and hang it all over the house - especially on the refrigerator door.

Yikes.

We need to turn it around...

I went into the beginning of this new year full of hope and excitement. I really do think that there are going to be some wonderful things happening for me and my family this year. I was anxious to get this year started for so many positive reasons.

But then the new year started - and it didn't start well at all.

I found out on the second day of the year that one of my friends was going through a personal hell, and as a mother, it hit home for me.

On the third day, we got more devastating news that again, hit me so incredibly hard.

The Dude has been having problems with his truck. My "service engine" light was on. He has to get two teeth pulled tomorrow afternoon.

It just hasn't been a stellar start to the year. But at the same time I know that it could always be worse.

We spent part of the afternoon today working on his truck. Although we didn't get it fixed, we have now narrowed down the problem and are about 98% sure that we know what's wrong with it. He can drive it for now, for short distances, but it needs to be fixed. Of course that doesn't come for free, but we can get it taken care of in the next couple of weeks.

My "service engine" light? I had a sneaking suspicion desperate hope that it was something stupid - and it was. Turns out the gas cap wasn't on tight enough to make it happy. Stupid thing. But the light's off now, so it's good.

Tonight, however.....tonight was hard. As I mentioned the other day, a little boy who was the son of one of Sarah's mentors was killed in a horrible accident last week. As a mother, I can't even begin to imagine the impact of losing a child. I just can't wrap my head around it. After the kids got home from school and basketball practice tonight, Sarah announced that she wanted to go to the boy's viewing. I wasn't sure that it was a good idea, but she and I talked about it and she really wanted to go. I told her she would have to check with her father, since she was supposed to go to church with him tonight. He agreed that she could go, but only if I went with her. So plans quickly changed, Ex1 came and got Emily and Jared, I took Alex and Daniel over to The Dude's house, and Sarah and I went to the viewing.

It was so hard. So incredibly hard. Seeing the little boy's parents and sisters there, and the other mourners...looking at the pictures and the videos from his short little life....my heart shattered so many times tonight. Seeing the pain in his mother's eyes as she hugged me and thanked me for coming....I have tears running down my face as I'm typing this.

All I've been able to think for the past few days is "something's got to give" - there has been too much bad stuff to start off a new year. Way too much. It needs to change, and somehow we need to turn it around. So I started thinking - always dangerous for me to do.

Tomorrow, January 10, 2013 is my 2 year blogiversary. It's been 2 years since I started this crazy thing.  And Sunday, January 13, is both my 42nd birthday and the 2nd anniversary of the day that my 2nd divorce became final.

I need to celebrate. I want to celebrate. I want to be happy. While I can't forget about the bad stuff, I can't focus on it - and I don't want anyone else to focus on the bad stuff either.

So what do we do?

I know what I'm going to do. I've always been a huge fan of the "Pay it Forward" movement (as is my good friend over at Mom-troversial) and I'm going to start making a really conscious effort to pay it forward as much as I can and in as many ways as I can. I have a pile of stuff sitting by my front door already that needs to be donated - and it's going to go out this week. We have toys that the kids have outgrown or they don't like or whatever. Guess what? They're going out the door too.

I've made up my mind that I am going to do as much as I can for two of my favorite local organizations too - our homeless shelter and our women's safe house. I have my own personal reasons for choosing those two in particular, but they're going to be getting some of my time, my money, and any of my "stuff" that they can use.

So - for my blogiversary and for my birthday, this is the best gift that anyone could give to me (*cough* along with a pair of warm fuzzy slippers so that I don't have to keep wearing The Dude's that are 18 sizes too big for me *cough*). Go out and do something for someone. Donate something somewhere. Be nice to someone. Donate something that you don't need anymore instead of selling it. Volunteer your time. If you have the cash, make a donation to a local organization that needs it. There are so many ways that we can make someone else's life just a little bit easier, but we overlook those things so often in our hurry to deal with our own lives. Pay it forward, people. Please.

So go and do it, and tell me what you did. Leave it in a comment here, post it on my facebook wall, send me an email, whatever. Tell the world that you did it, and maybe you'll inspire someone else to do the same thing.

Basketball, laundry, and .... ghosts?

So Sarah had her first basketball games last night. This is the first year that she's actually playing on the school team and not on the rec league, so it's a little bit different, but she is still having a great time. 

The biggest challenge for me is trying to keep the boys occupied for 3 full basketball games - they started out great, but of course that didn't last very long. They can only sit still and amuse themselves for a certain period of time, and 3 1/2 hours far exceeded that last night.

They really do like each other -
sometimes.

Sarah did kick some serious butt during the first game. The game was pretty fast-paced and intense, and she got at least 2 baskets, including this one - I just wish that the picture would have come out a little bit clearer.

Getting some pointers from one of the coaches.

I love this picture.

So they won the first game, which was the 7th grade team. The 8th grade team played next, and they lost. The third game is a combination of 7th and 8th graders, and Sarah got quite a bit of playing time in that game too until she got hurt. We aren't sure what happened because it was over in a split second, but she was airborne and then she was on the floor. She ended up hurting her thumb, but it appears to just be sprained at this point - although of course she thinks that she's dying. Anyway, they ended up losing that game too.

So we came home, dealt with attitudes, and the kids went to bed. The Dude came over to hang out and we watched a movie and then crashed.

Today started out like a fairly typical day. I got the kids up and off to school and then came back home and crawled back into bed because I really wasn't feeling too hot. The Dude took off for work, and I slept for a couple more hours. Then I decided that I was going to strip my bed and wash the sheets and the mattress pad.

First mistake.

I've washed that mattress pad a dozen times before, and I've never had an issue with it. This time, however, it somehow worked its way up and out of the washer tub and part of it apparently got jammed between the tub and the shell of the washer, and caused water to go all over the floor in the laundry room. I started to clean that up, and then the next thing I knew I was rearranging stuff.

I hate when that happens.

In the process of moving things around in there, I attempted to move the chest freezer about 8" from where it was so that it would be against the wall to save some room. It wouldn't move. So I shoved it. Hard. And something popped from inside it. And then I realized that the reason that it wouldn't move was because the cord wasn't long enough. And then it shut off and wouldn't come back on again.

Seriously? Did I just kill my freezer?

Actually, it appears that I did not kill it. It did eventually come back on. And I did get it moved to where I wanted it to be - I just plugged it into a power strip to give me a little extra leeway for positioning.

So I'm not completely done organizing in there, but it definitely looks better. I have some stuff that needs to go out into the garage, but that won't happen until daytime - so for now it'll just get piled up on the porch. Realistically it'll probably sit on the porch until it annoys me enough for me to put it in the garage.

Now, I've mentioned my ghost a few times. I don't talk about him a whole lot, because, well, people might think that I'm crazy. But there is definitely something in this house. I noticed a bunch of really weird stuff today, but I didn't say anything to anyone about it, other than some friends online.

I was trying to get all of the kids to go to bed, and thought that I had succeeded when the girls came back out and started complaining to me that their room is really spooky. They couldn't tell me what specifically was bothering them - just that it was "creeping them out". I assured them that everything was fine and told them to go back to bed. They turned around and started heading for the hallway when they both yelped in fear...

....and then busted up laughing.

Yes, he was asleep. In the hallway. On the hardwood floor.

No, I did not leave him there. I put him in bed.