Mike's Swearing-In

A proud day for my son.

Multi-tasking and not so well

I have a paper due tomorrow and I can't seem to get my thoughts together. Maybe it's because I know I'm working in San Francisco next weekend and I have so much to do before I fly out on Friday morning before the sun comes up. There are only so many directions this brain of mine can travel in one evening. I know I used to rock one baby in one arm, be changing the diaper of his brother, be stirring the morning oatmeal with a free hand and simultaneously letting the dog out for his morning poop. All this I swear to you I did and still managed to remain......well....haggard, worn, stressed and more than a little sensitive to comments like, "so what do you stay-at-home moms DO all day??"

So I'm sitting here a lifetime later, haggard, worn and stressed and there is not a baby or a pooping dog in sight. I'm Nair'ing my upper lip because the goofy little chick who works at my nail place said to me "You want wax? We do lips? You look like boy!" and god help me, I don't want to "look like boy!!!" not with the demand for haggard, worn, stressed divorced chicks with wrinkles and itsy bitsy bank accounts such as it is. And I'm trying to figurer out this paper. And I'm also paying some bills online.

How tough should it be? Outline the paper, fill in around the points and wrap it all up with a nice conclusion? Log on to the power company website, enter my username and password, enter the amount...click and a click and a credit card and double click...............all the while, making a list on a yellow legal pad of all the things I need to take with me to San Fran.

Well. You want to know what happened? Ok I'll tell you what happened. I burnt my lip. It's all red and puffy and swollen. Now I "look like boy who got hit with baseball on upper lip". And simultaneously I can't seem to even get points A and B to make one bit of sense for this research paper, thus there IS no research paper. And for the reasonable service charge of $4.75 I just paid the power company a total of 80 cents. That's right. I paid them EIGHTY CENTS and they charged me FOUR DOLLARS AND SEVENTY FIVE CENTS for the privilege of paying on line. Intending to pay them the full $80 bucks I owed them, I entered 8 and I entered 0 and didn't think to check for decimal points and stuff.

DID I see the disclaimer at the last moment that said something along the lines of "Warning, please be aware once you click "Approve" your payment can NOT be changed......"

Well yes. Fleetingly, yes I did see it. I saw it and I totally ignored it because I was wiping Nair off my damn lip at the time and I was watching Shawn Johnson kick ass on Dancing with the Stars and my cat was throwing up a leftover chocolate cupcake into one of my suede clogs and I just sort of spontaneously clicked which is what haggard, worn and stressed women do when they are multitasking and watching recycled cupcake fill their favorite shoes. Thus, I paid the power company 80 cents.

Yes, of course I can log back on and pay the $79.20 balance now due.
For another service charge???? Helllllllllllllllll no and can I get an AMEN from anyone to that???

I'm tired. Shawn did a nice job. Well heck of course she did a nice job...easy for her, she's young and adorable and has leg muscles that could squeeze open a coconut. Might as well face it, this paper just is NOT going to happen tonight and they're gonna shut my power off anyway, might as well go to bed...at least it'll be dark.

Tomorrow will be brand new day full of lovely possibilities.

Whew.......!!!!!

I'm sitting here mindlessly watching Poltergeist II just because it's on. This is a very dumb movie. I know it's old but it's the first time I've ever seen it. Ok, maybe on the big screen it would be horrifying. Not so much this afternoon. I keep thinking, what a mean way to treat a nice little girl in cute red jammies. She should be having a nice bowl of ice cream and heading off to a bedtime story. Harry Potter is on later. Love that movie and it's just nice to be snuggled into my couch tonight doing not a thing.

My April roared in like a lion. First week Mike flew in with my little Victoria on Wednesday, Sar flew home from Portland on Thursday and my cousin Margie flew in from California on Friday. After a great girlie night we all got dressed up for Mike and Nikki's engagement party on Saturday night. Victoria was frilly and beautiful in her little black velvet and red satin dress and was prancing aorund my place like a princess. Grandma Debbie tried real hard to get that beautifully wispy reddish Welsh hair of hers knotted up top her head in a proper do but there are good reasons why we pay hair chicks to do that sort of thing. And her mommy is a fabulous hair chick! She's used to the best, no way I could match her magic. After a couple of false starts, we ended up with a very nice little pony tail with special-evening curls. Her little black velvet shoes and tights ("they're my PANTYHOSE, Grandma") were the finishing touch. It was pouring down rain when we left for the party. Watched the Princess dodge puddles as she ran with Aunt Margie into the party and made a mental note to email my best buddy John and thank him again for my favorite artsy-fartsy umbrella.

Mid-party the kids got on the DJ's microphone and made an announcement..........we have a surprise for you, we're getting married here tonight!.............and they rolled back a big, movable wall in the party lodge behind which was a nifty candlelit chapel set up. Nikki and Mike ducked out of the party for 10 minutes, changed into "Here comes the bride..." duds and right then and there, we had a wedding. Without the advantage of a proper wedding rehearsal all of the surprise attendants did a great job, including Victoria who accepted the official duties of Flower Girl with the royal finesse to which she was clearly born.

And lahh tee dahh and yada yada yada....I do, I do too.....smooch, smooch.....and we danced the night awayyyyyyyyyyyyy.
Victoria was right there on the floor, shakin' it with all of the other pretty girls. Click on the arrow below the video screen:

It was a fun night. An exhausting, perfect, fun, fun night. The next couple of days we spent just hanging out and having fun. Auntie Sara and Victoria spent some quality time together which included a 3-D movie that required wicked cool glasses.

Wednesday morning Victoria and I got in the car, drove to Omaha and we flew her home to Virginia where mom and Josh and Nana were waiting. I make this trip with her 3-5 times a year. Friends ask me if it isn't exhausting and wonder how she likes flying. Victoria is a seasoned traveler. She could give the pre-flight safety talk herself if the flight attendants would let her. And we just make a real fun Grandma Debbie and Victoria day out of it.

We laugh and draw pictures in the airports and we have fun on the plane.

This particular flight was not without incident. Earlier in the week, Princess Victoria discovered her first loose tooth.

She was so excited. She called Mom. She called Dad.

We watched it for 3 days and it got looser and looser............you guessed it. Somewhere over Michigan at about 30,000 feet the tooth came out. She kept trying to pull it and it was hanging by a thread so finally Grandma helped. And there it was.

I'd forgotten how tiny baby teeth are as I carefully wrapped it up in the corner of an envelope and tucked it into my purse so she could put it under her pillow for the tooth fairy. She told me that she thought the tooth fairy would probably leave her some jewelry. And cash. She was grinning and freshly toothless when the plane touched down in Norfolk.

I was sitting on the bed eating take-out Chinese in my airport hotel by 8, on a plane for home again at 6 the next morning, back to work Friday, helped clean at my moms house Saturday morning and babysat for some friends on Saturday night. (Are you still with me??)

Babysitting has certainly changed. When I got there little Aidan was already asleep upstairs and there was a little tv screen thingie in the living room where I could watch her and hear her all evening. As I sat on the couch and played with the dogs, I watched her stretch and dream and wiggle all over the crib, but she never woke up. It was the coolest thing!!! Watching a baby sleep on a little tv screen. AHHHHH-MAZING. (I'm showing my age, aren't I??) I was a little bummed. Never even got to hold the baby. But it was fun watching her wiggle and sleep on that little screen, kind of like a mini-movie next to the one I was watching on the bigger screen.

Sunday morning my David and his girlfriend invited me and the other kids over for brunch. Love it when the kids cook for me!!!! The two of them are a perfect match. They are both computer gamers. Although their dining table was cleared and nicely set for brunch, they tell me it's usually set with back-to-back computers and........as his sister tried to describe to me later this week........enough controllers and gaming props that it sort of looks like the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise in there. Over brunch he told us his job as a manager had been eliminated. He was offered a lateral position or a nice severance package. He took the package, he's got a plan, he's diving off into a brand new direction. Man but I DO love it that my kids are fearless. This mama was grinning allllllllllll the way home with her lovely Easter lily next to her in the front seat.

I spent the rest of Easter Sunday squeezing my cerebral cortex to it's maximum pressure all afternoon, trying to do my homework. I've got a B+ in this class right now and it's driving this A-lovin' girl crazy. Tuesday night was class. This bears yet another mention of advancing technology and my efforts to keep up with it. We don't hand in homework. We upload it. I know this will come as no surprise to anyone under the age of 40 I suppose, but it's a freakin' MIRACLE to me. No hard copies. No "my dog ate it" excuses. Nope. I just log on to the university website and UPLOAD MY HOMEWORK. If you don't know what that means..........well, if you don't know what that means you must be my age. I can't explain it. Somehow one minute it's HERE. And then after a few clicks and stuff....it's THERE. Honest, it gives me the willies just to say it. Like Big Brother is living in my living room...

Mid-week after Easter Sar drove in from Portland (having flown back after the wedding festivities and turned right around to bring her car back) after nine months living there, house sitting for a dear friend. She's in town for a couple of weeks and will be heading off to Tennessee where she'll be working as a counselor in an "outward bound" kind of program for at-risk kids. It's fun having her home even though she's got lots of places to be and we won't be seeing her much this visit. (That's one thing about raising really great kids who have lots of friends. When they grow up you have to be understanding and share them with the world. But I'll tell you what, the phone calls home and the postcards are great!)

Anyway, Monday I left work early, picked up Sara and drove North to a suburb to watch my son get sworn in as a police officer. Big week for him after getting married a few days earlier. Officer Mike is badge #101 and reports to the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy in a couple of weeks for training. He has assured me, should I speed in his town he will be obligated to give me a ticket. I have assured him if that ever happens I'll be so tickled to think he's my son standing there all handsome in his uniform that I will probably record the entire thing on my cell phone, ask him to wave hi into the camera and I'll get out of the car, flag down a motorist and ask them to take our picture together to remember the moment for posterity. And of course I will post it on my blog. So make sure that badge is polished at all times, Mister, yer gonna be in the movies.

This morning I got up at 5:30 to make my 6:30 AM Weight Watchers meeting. Had my new friend and classmate Janell not told me she'd be there and expect to see me, honest, I would have stayed in bed. It was a drippy, soggy kind of morning. The window was open. I could hear robins. The cat was snoring. It would have been so easy to just roll over and snuggle into that pillow. But I did not!!! Thank you for the peer pressure Janell!!!! Once I pried my eyes open and got going, it was a great morning. Got my hair cut and I feel cute as a button.

Now we rest. Seriously. I'm barefoot. Nothing going on tonight. Promised myself I won't even LOOK at my homework until 7 tomorrow morning. Feels kind of anti-climactic to tell you the truth, but next weekend I'm working in San Francisco so I suppose it's a good idea to just kick back. I can do that.

Just not for long, it seems. You'll remember I mentioned my buddy John earlier. One of his favorite phrases: I'll rest when I'm dead. I'm not going to wait that long, but I know what he means. It seems there is always just so much to do.

Gotta Start Takin' the Train.....

This sort of thing hardly ever happens to me in airports...........

Takes me back......

How many of us ran out and bought another Moody Blues disk after watching this commercial for the first time??