What I Know For Now

I am not thinking productively today. Too much on my mind to add anything new into my head, so I thought maybe I would revisit this whole blog thing in order to make some room. I have been thinking about this past year, and how different it has been, and how much I have learned. The kind of lessons that I thought I was done with. So I have compiled a list of things I know today, that I didn't know last year.

• Secrets eat us alive, no matter how noble we think our reasons for keeping them.

• Regardless of whether I feel like my actions will bring about the end of the world, I am not powerful enough to break the world.

• Change is essential.

• Eggs are most delicious when prepared over easy with a dash of salt.

• One great dream about a friend no longer with us (Bob), reminded me that time wasted with friends is not time wasted.

• There is no phrase more confusing or more welcome in the English language than, "I love you."

• Being kind and respectful is important, even when it's hard.

• Sometimes you have to apologize when you don't want to, or when you think the other person is more wrong than you, and there is no shame in that.

 • It is okay to love someone that doesn't love you back.

• My younger brothers are amazing men and I am so glad to have met them in person.

• People mean well, even if they don't always know how to act well.

• Cuddling on the couch with either of my sons, or my dog, can cure any bad mood. It's practically magic. It will also improve a good mood.

• I have chosen my friends wisely.

• I really like the people my kids are becoming, and am proud to have had a part in it.

• Occasionally, what you thought would kill you is exactly what saves you.

• Things have a way of working out.

So, that's all I have. A little self indulgent, but there is nothing wrong with that. Maybe now I can get something done, although I will probably just find something else to distract me.

dead fish and stuff

It is a different Christmas in our house this year. We don't have the usual drive half way around the world and back, twice in 2 day plans that we usually have. I am not sure if I'm relieved or disappointed, and since it is my choice to make, I guess I'll pick relieved.

This has been a harder than usual year, and only now am I getting it into some kind of perspective. There is nothing like seeing some of your friends dealing with really big stuff, to realize how manageable yours is. Things around here are hunky-dory.

Now what does this have to do with dead fish, you're wondering? Nothing.

I kill fish, actually I kill most living things in my care. I don't do this on purpose, but the results are the same. As far as fish go, we have been through, Shaggy, Elvis, Jethro, Poncho, Sombrero, Troy, Gabriella, Zach, Kevin 1 and Kevin 2, and Bubbles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. To say I kill fish is a bit of an understatement. My intentions have always been good, and it actually hurts my feelings that it has become a running joke in my house. So far, the turtle has proven himself indestructible.

It isn't just fish that I kill either, plants are not immune to my death touch. I am so bad with plants that I am surprised when I walk by them if they don't start turning brown. I have an aunt that buys my kids and myself plants, and other growing things for birthdays and holidays (herb gardens, fruit trees, vegetable gardens, etc.), and they all wind up as buckets of dirt. Every time one of these gifts makes it in to the house, my husband always says, "It's like they don't even know you." or "Do they think they can change you?". My grandmother(Nana), my mom and all of her sisters, could grow a jungle on a rock with no soil or water, but the only thing I can grow is mold in my refrigerator. Really, my kids should be grateful that they've made it this far.

I have no reason for telling you this, but I needed some sort of lead in for this poem that Katie wrote that I am about to post.

My Fish
by Katie Hoye

I wish
my fish could fly
I don't
want it to die
Then I would cry
because
my fish would be dead
and I would be alive
My fish
is named Joe
He likes the snow
Joe plays with hobos
His best friends name is Romo
Joe and Romo jump off a cliff
Do you know what happens after this?

 

 

Click on images to view larger.

stuff i found in the couch

Finally, the much anticipated, long ago promised, sequel to stuff I found under the couch.

3 pencils, 1 eraser, 1 High School Musical memo pad, 1 advertisement for Beverly Hills Chihuahua, 9 socks (3 Emma's, 1 Katie's, 5 of Jack and Billy), 5 lincoln logs, 6 assorted legos, an index card on which Billy wrote "I do not love you. I like you.", 1 lego astronaut, plastic fire, 1 shiny black rock, a tire to a toy car, a GI Joe arm (could also be star wars, or another action figure, hard to tell from an arm), an Expo pen, several sunflower seeds, 1 quarter, 3 pennies, a variety of candy wrappers, nerds, a gingerbread cookie recipe, vacuum cleaner fan belt, little stuffed rottweiler, something that looked like a pasty (turned out to be a spiderman suction cup), 1 Cars game for a Leapster, a placemat with the solar system on it, 1 pen cap, 1 tag that you aren't supposed to rip off the mattress, and 2 paper airplanes.

psycho

Every year, a few weeks before Christmas, I load the kids into the truck and head out to my favorite Christmas tree lot. The one that I have gotten my tree from for the last 6 or 7 years is from non-profit lot for the New-Life halfway house. They are a halfway house for some serious ex-cons, and they have the guys from the house run the lot. It is sort of like buying your Christmas tree from the Hell's Angels.

Why do I go back year after year?.....The atmosphere, of course.

This year when I get there my kids, in usual form, go barrelling out leaving me talking to myself about not knocking over trees or other people, and I idle in behind them. I first look at the Nobles, which I always want, but can never bring myself to buy because they are twice as much as the Douglas Fir, and either way it will be on the curb with the trash in a few weeks.

So, the kids pick a tree, and I go in search of someone to help me get it. The man I find looks like he wasn't ever supposed to get out, he only had a few teeth left and they didn't look like he was going to have them a whole lot longer, and everything about him said that he probably hadn't made many good choices in life. I liked him immediately.

Being the type of person that can't even go into the grocery store without striking up a conversation with the checker (yes, I am that person), I inquired about his giant drill bits he wore as earrings, and if they hurt. He told me that they didn't but that the ones that had been torn out of his other ear sure did, and he turned to show me his flappy ear skin on the other side. I informed him that I had tattoos, but that for some reason piercings gave me the heebie-jeebies. He laughs and shows me the tattoo on his arm that he got with a paper clip that said PSYCHO in block letters (in the same style I used to write the band RUSH on my notebooks in high school) because that was his nickname. None of this was meant to be intimidating. Psycho was very much a gentleman, and the conversation flowed easily.

He carried my tree up to the front, and handed it off to the guys who trim it up, and asked me if he could show the kids some card tricks while I finished up. I finished my business, had the tree loaded into the truck, and went to gather my kids from the game of three card monty Psycho was showing them, and tipped him well.

I don't know what Psycho did to wind up in prison, nor do I doubt that it is where he belonged, but he was more than kind to me and my kids, and I wish him well. I will be buying my tree there again next year.

*above picture isn't Psycho (well he maybe, but he isn't my Psycho)

red things make me happy

I haven't blogged in a while, I have been busy, and I am not really all that exciting of a person. I have had a lot of cute kid stories, such as when Billy got sick and described a headache as little people having a cake fight in his head, and when I told him that eventually they would run out of cake, he informed me that their cake was infinite. Anybody who has met him knows that I am not making this up. He then went on to tell me that his brain looked like space and the Marines were there and they were going to explode Pluto.

There is also Katie who has taken up trumpet, and we make her practice it in the closet. I told someone about this and they were aghast, and I said, "It's really okay, we put a light in there."

Anything else that has gone on would qualify as everything and nothing. Billy turned 5, Victor got married, studying, cooking, cleaning, playing, etc. Pretty status quo, just happy to get to wake up every morning to do it.

So what could any of this have to do with a picture of a table? Nothing. Except that I built it. From an idea in my head, I bought wood, and used tools that I had never used before and I made it real. I have never built anything. I have refinished lots of furniture, and I love doing it, taking something that looks like it has outlived its usefulness and making it beautiful again. Even more than that, I love the actual job, the stripping, and endless sanding, the smell of wood, being in the garage doing something with the kids playing out front.

Maybe what I like, in either case, is the fact that I did it. I messed this table up in every way that I could, I probably built it 3 times before I got it right, but there it is. It is a small accomplishment, I know, but I like seeing my kids put their feet up on it, far more than if I had bought it at Ethan Allen, and it looks great in the living room with my giant ugly couch. So my extremly heavy, big red, nowhere near perfect, coffee table is now my favorite piece of furniture in my house.

another school year...

The kids went back to school a few weeks ago, and we are finally getting back in the swing of things. Hard to get used to waking up again after spending an entire summer teaching the kids to sleep until 10am.

Billy started kindergarten, which is bittersweet, because he is the last to go, but also now I have time to actually get something done. He seems to really like it, and everyday, when I pick him up he tells me what he had for lunch, and shows me his new spork. The other day I went to pick him up and the first words out of his mouth were, "Mommy, today I had a corn dog with honey. Bees make honey. How do bees make honey? They had beans today, but I didn't eat them because they were green?" That is a little dose of the everyday pickup conversation, just change the food items.

Katie and Jack are settling in nicely, same school, different teachers, all is well.

Emma started middle school, and she seems to be doing well with it, I think the whole idea is harder on me than it is on her, I can't believe that she can be old enough to go to middle school.

After the first week, she comes home with a backpack full of books so heavy she had to keep stopping to rest on her way home, and those were for only half of her classes. I can't believe they have kids hauling this stuff around and don't even give them lockers. That night I went out and got her a very high quality rolling backpack to try and ease her load.

Today, Emma comes home and she is carrying her big binder in her hand because she got four more books, and there wasn't room for them in her backpack, and even with the rolling backpack she comes home exhausted. When she walks in she is exasperated and says, "That's it, I'm not bringing my textbooks to school anymore." I ask how she can do that, doesn't she need them for class? Her response, "No, they keep a copy of them under our desks."

She has been taking 60lbs. of books to school everyday for no reason, and I have been ranting about how awful they are for 2 weeks. It cracks me up that she can be so smart, and so absentminded at the same time, apparently this was the first that it occurred to her that not everyone was hauling all of their books around. It is absolutely impossible not to love that girl.

toilet humor...

We had a birthday party for Katie last weekend at Mike's mom's house, and it was a lot of fun. They have so many cousins to play with, and they really all do play with each other, nobody ever gets left out of the mix. So although I always leave with a headache, I also always have a good time there.

At one point during the party Mike and Billy had this little conversation:

Billy is in the bathroom when it takes place.

Mike: "You okay in there?"
Billy: "Yes, Daddy I really like this bathroom"
Mike: "Why's that"
Billy: "Because when I poop the water splashes me on the butt"
Mike: (laughing hysterically)
Billy: "Isn't that cool?"

This is a perfect example of how most conversations go with this kid, even when he is in trouble one of us will usually have to leave the room so that he doesn't see us laughing.

Some people want well mannered kids, or studious kids, or kids that are orderly and helpful, I am not one of those people. Not that I would kick them to the curb for any of those things, but I appreciate when they can find the weirdness of a situation, when they look at things and see what they can be, instead of just what they are supposed to be.

We have a fan in our house that has a fairly small opening so that you can blow all the air in one direction, Jackson figured out that if he put a beach ball in front of it, the ball will spin in the air for hours at a time. We brought the same fan to my mother in law's, and our niece Lizzy, used it to blow the tissue paper from the gifts across the room, laughing her butt off the entire time. I love that, it's such a great approach to life.

I am married to a pessimist (reading this will come as no surprise to him), for everything that I want to do, he will have at least 5 reasons why it is a bad idea, or how it won't work. I love my husband, but it is very annoying. I prefer trying to see how I CAN make it work, I think more gets done that way. Everything we have from cell phones to microwaves, to the computer games that he loves so much (not to mention the computers he plays them on), came from someone looking at the old version, and thinking they could make it a little bit better.

Whether you believe we evolved from apes, or we were created on the sixth day, you can't deny that we have come a long way, baby. After another argument with Adam, because he was going on about how she should do the dishes because, after all she was created from his rib, Eve couldn't hop on an airplane to see her mother (partly because she didn't have a mother) because there were no planes. If you would have even suggested such a thing, right after they asked, "Where did you come from, I thought it was just me and Adam in this garden?", they would have thought you were insane. There were no big metal birds to take you visit your mother in Florida, or for a girls weekend in Vegas.

People can fight forever about creationism or evolution, it's sort of like politics, I'd rather just keep it to myself, either way it's all in the past. Talk to me about innovation, because I can go on forever about where we might be going.

I think I will end this post here, now that it has taken such an odd turn.


**20 best update**

I didn't mention in my previous post that the guy had some criteria for picking the "best of all time" using staying power, critics reviews, Grammy noms, etc.. because where is the fun in that? I wanted to know what your favorites would be if you could make the list.

Love all the feedback, considering that even my dad emailed me to find out why Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas', and Lawrence Welk's Polkas, didn't make the list.

I would have to agree with you, Mike, on Soap Opera, it is still one of my favorites to date. I would also throw in Dixie Chicks - Fly, Meatloaf - Bat out of Hell, and Red Hot Chili Peppers (any of their first 4 albums).

20 best albums of all time

I read an article, or a music blog discussing the 20 best albums of all time. Some I agree with, some I just flat out don't, and some it seems to be a grave injustice that they are mising.

So, here is the list:

20. Faith - George Michael
19. Appetite for Destruction - Guns'n'Roses
18. Purple Rain - Prince
17. Houses Of The Holy - Led Zeppelin
16. Born In The U.S.A. - Bruce Springsteen
15. Nevermind - Nirvana
14. Van Halen - Van Halen
13. Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
12. The Wall - Pink Floyd
11. The Joshua Tree - U2
10. Metallica - Metallica
9. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
8. Hotel California - Eagles
7. The White Album - The Beatles
6. Led Zeppelin IV - Led Zeppelin
5. Abbey Road - The Beatles
4. Physical Graffiti - Led Zeppelin
3. Thriller - Michael Jackson
2. Dark Side Of The Moon - Pink Floyd
1. Songs In The Key Of Life - Stevie Wonder

Now I am sure that all of you Zepplin lovers out there will be thrilled to see that they dominate 25% of the list (pretty impressive), but I see some holes. I get that this is a list of one man's opinion, but I want to know what you think, you have to exclude all "best of" or "greatest hits".

Here is a condensed list of albums that I believe are missing:

Carol King - Tapestry
Boston - Boston
AC/DC - Back in Black
Janis Joplin - Pearl
Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet
Van Morrison - Moondance
Styx - Grand Illusion

That's all I can think of right now, and I do agree with alot of the 20, although I might shift their positions a bit #'s 1,2,3,4,7,13,18, and 19 all would have made my list.

Feedback, I want feedback, leave comments, what is missing? What should or shouldn't be there? Tell me how upset you are that Journey, or Air Supply didn't make the list and how under appreciated they are.

chapter summary...

Let's see, I don't know what to write. I have so much to write because I haven't done this in so long, that I don't know where to start.

For those of you that didn't know I spent the first few weeks of this summer in the hospital (the stay was long, the drugs were good). I had a gallbladder that was giving me a little too much trouble, so I had it removed, because that is how I handle trouble(My kids should beware).

I think it was all harder on my husband than it was for me, because he was left trying to find people to watch all of our kids (sometimes driving to San Diego to pick up babysitters), going to work, and of course visiting me. I should mention that I went in on Father's Day. The man is brilliant though, he thought to bring me in a universal remote to operate the hospital TV so that I didn't have to go through every channel one at a time.

As horrible as being in the hospital was (and the first hospital that I was in was truly horrible) I had a roommate there named Pat that was great and hilarious, and talked about food constantly, which kind of sucked because I wasn't even allowed to have water, but I loved listening to her complain because she did it so entertainingly.

At the second hospital everyone was very on top of things and the care was good. I also had a night nurse who would bring me Popsicles and hang out in my room to watch TV while she did her charts, and her assistant who would prop his feet up with my sports page and argue with me about the Raiders and Chargers ( I still don't get how decent people can like the Raiders, but that is another post).

The best part of the whole experience was probably my dad. My mom left town the day I went in and he made sure that I was taken care of every step of the way, whether it was bringing me the paper in the morning, dealing with the doctors, or sitting around reading a book while I slept, he was just generally terrific.

Didn't really mean this to be a blog about the hospital, but oh well, it is what it is. I was hoping it would have been a little bit more like an episode of Scrubs, but it's the only story I've got. So, thank you to all that visited, called, helped with my kids, and everything else, you never really know how many people are in your corner until you're backed into it a bit.


PS- Jess that story I will was telling you about will be blogged on soon.

sea world

Yesterday I went on a field trip to Sea World with Jackson's kindergarten class, I was pretty excited to get to go, as I have not been on a field trip with the any of my kids in a few years. I also have not been to Sea World since I was 7 and the only thing that I remember about that was holding a starfish, although it's sure not a bad memory to have.

I had to get up at 5:30am for this one, which in my mind is an ugodly hour, and got very little sleep due to waking up every hour thinking I was going to oversleep, which is really funny because it isn't all that much earlier than I usually wake up. When we met up at the classroom, all the moms looked pretty spent, except for the one mom, that I will refer to as my new best friend, who thought to go to Starbucks and pick up a coffee traveler to share with all.

We got on the bus and the driver, who was kind of a nut, started to explain to us parents and a bus load of kindergartners about all of the emergeny exits and radios and first aid kits, but everything she said started with, "If I was rendered unconscious..." I was left wondering if she had some medical condition that nobody was telling us about, but I'll just say she didn't leave me with a great deal of confidence in her abilities. Then I got in trouble on the bus for leaning against the emergency door, and all I could think is, wow, I haven't been on a school bus in years, and yet I am once again pegged as the troublemaker, and I know she was staring at me in that giant rearview mirror of hers throughout the entire trip.

The rest of the day was typical field trip stuff, wrangling kids, taking pictures, a little sunburn, a little walking, many trips to the bathroom, and coming home really tired. They all seemed to have a good time, and nobody got lost, which for me is pretty good, I have a tendency to lose kids in crowded places. The video above (if I got it to work, otherwise ignore this sentence) is of the ride home on the bus, he later said he wasn't really asleep, just pretending (I don't buy it).