It'll make you go blind

I've spent the past month with shingles in my eye. There are still 3 shingles on my cornea that we just "wait and watch". I would say "wait and see", but it hits too close to home. You can loose your eye sight from shingles in your eye and while we are "waiting" and "watching" these lovely things grow on my eye, blindness is still on the table.

I also now have to take a drug (neurontin) that makes me very tired and sluggish. I feel about 2 steps behind in conversations and have trouble making myself get out of bed in the mornings. Nice. I get to be like this for 6 months.

Nothing to do but just sit back and love what is. What is right now is an unwanted, uninvited virus running lose in my body. Hard to embrace the ultimate turn-around: "The shingles should have me".

Totally bad mom

Ummm...where'd the summer go? I thought I would get so much done this summer, but ended up being MORE busy with the kids to watch 24/7 than I was before school let out. School starts again Monday. Yipee.
Umm...Kevin, you're not aloud to read this. Turn away, go back to doing whatever you were doing. I haven't done anything. Yeah, I know... the last time I said that was when I got pregnant with Quentin, but I didn't do that by myself buddy.


(Is the room clear?)
O.K. I have to fess up. This happened to me yesterday. I'm totally
embarrassed. Olivia's best friend Karen spent the day with us b/c her
mom works at the school and had to work today. When she came to pick
up Karen, I was down in the basement working on a fitting with my
babysitter Kelley, just sewing and chatting, blah, blah, blah.

Kelley is a saint. She's babysat my kids all summer long when I've needed to run to the store or whatever, maybe a total of 25 hours over the summer. She's done is totally for free and I'm exchanging sewing business clothes for her. She' has...um..."figure issues". She loves button down tops, but they don't fit her. So I'm making her custom fit clothing for school (she's a teacher)

Anyway, I'm just down in the basement sewing away on her muslin, trying it on her here and there and all of the sudden I realize that Quentin (my 4 year old) sounds like he's talking to someone upstairs. Then I realize it's time for Karen's mom to be here. oops!
So I go up and she's just sitting in my living room chatting with
Quentin (who ...um..I left watching tv while I worked with Kelley). I think she may
have been there several minutes already. Then, get this...I don't
know where the girls are. OMG. Well, I had told them they could go
play at the neighbors house about an hour before and the neighborhood
girls all move from house to house, nothing unusual, but really not
what I needed right then. Then, (oh, I'm not done yet), when I do
find them, they're all red in the face, too hot or sunburned, couldn't
tell right away, they'd been jumping on a trampoline at the
neighbors). I'm wondering if Karen will ever be aloud to come back!
I think I could get some bad mom award for that one.

Wow, I really miss this view

Going through my "nature shots" folder in "my photos", I ran across this pic taken this past January. This is the view we used to have from our front yard. Now, in our new house, we can't see the mountain's at all b/c of the stupid people across the street from us that put their house right in the way. How thoughtless of them! However, we did step out in our back yard an hour ago and saw this:
Can you make out the double rainbow? The whole thing made a complete arch across the sky. Wow!

FQ, really...I'm not making this up

My freak quotient for the day included the following:

I took the kids to the mall today. We got kids meals from DQ which comes with a kids ice cream cone for dessert. As we were finishing up our cones and cleaning our mess off the table, I had my hand on the stoller (yeah don't give me grief about still using the stoller for children who weren't even toddler's recently. You try taking my three offspring to the mall by yourself without hand held devises!) and I felt a hand on top of mine. I turn and look and it's this little old stooped over wrinkled up lady. She says to me "honey, do you know where the kiosk is that's selling ephedra? The government just lifted the ban & I haven't had any in sooo long." I turn around and look and sure enough, just down the walk way is a kiosk selling ephedra. I didn't say where it was, just something vague like "I hadn't heard that". I do not want to be responsible for her having a stroke. What did she need ephedra for in the first place?

It's my odor. I attract freaks. Just saying that makes me remember back in Jr. High, my friends used to make fun of me for attracting all kinds of freaks. One time they bought a can of spray deoderant and made a fake label for it that said "freakoderant" to try to help me repel them. Apparently it can't be done.

BJ rocks

I'm back online after a near 5 months of intermentant to zilch for an internet connection. I feel like I've been missing my right arm and someone just glued it back on. Life is good again.

Better know your man

These are the INTERNATIONAL rules. I'd be curious to know what the American rules would be.

INTERNATIONAL RULES OF MANHOOD
1: Under no circumstances may two men share an umbrella.
2: It is ok for a man to cry ONLY under the following circumstances:
a. When a heroic dog dies to save its master.
b. The moment Angelina Jolie starts unbuttoning her blouse.
c. After wrecking your boss' car.
d. One hour, 12 minutes, 37 seconds into "The Crying Game".
3: Any Man who brings a camera to a bachelor party may be legally killed
and eaten by his buddies.
4: Unless he murdered someone in your family, you must bail a friend out
of jail within 12 hours.
5: If you've known a guy for more than 24 hours, his sister is off limits
forever unless you actually marry her.
6: Moaning about the brand of free beer in a buddy's fridge forbidden.
However complain at will if the temperature is unsuitable.
7: No man shall ever be required to buy a birthday present for another
man. In fact, even remembering your buddy's birthday is strictly optional.
8: On a road trip, the strongest bladder determines pit stops, not the
weakest.
9: When stumbling upon other guys watching a sporting event, you may ask
the score of the game in progress, but you may never ask who's playing.
10: It is permissible to drink a fruity alcohol drink only when you're
sunning on a tropical beach... and it's delivered by a topless model and
only when it's free.
11: Only in situations of moral and/or physical peril are you allowed to
kick another guy in the nuts.
12: Unless you're in prison, never fight naked.
13: Friends don't let friends wear Speedos. Ever. Issue closed.
14: If a man's fly is down, that's his problem, you didn't see anything.
15: Women who claim they "love to watch sports" must be treated as spies
until they demonstrate knowledge of the game and the ability to drink as
much as the other sports watchers.
16: A man in the company of a hot, suggestively dressed woman must remain
sober enough to fight.
17: Never hesitate to reach for the last beer or the last slice of pizza,
but not both, that's just greedy
18: If you compliment a guy on his six-pack, you'd better be talking about
his choice of beer.
19: Never join your girlfriend or wife in discussing a friend of yours,
except if she's withholding sex pending your response.
20: Phrases that may NOT be uttered to another man while he is lifting
weights:
a. Yeah, Baby, Push it!
b. C'mon, give me one more! Harder!
c. Another set and we can hit the showers!
21: Never talk to a man in a bathroom unless you are on equal footing:
i.e . Both urinating, both waiting in line, etc. For all other situations,
an almost imperceptible nod is all the conversation you need.
22: It is acceptable for you to drive her car. It is not acceptable for
her to drive yours.
23: Thou shall not buy a car in the colors of brown, pink, lime green,
orange or sky blue.
24: The girl who replies to the question "What do you want for Christmas?"
with "If you loved me, you'd know what I want!" gets an Xbox. End of
story.
25: There is no reason for guys to watch Ice Skating or Men's Gymnastics.
Ever.

My favorite quote, to date

"Back when I was a Christian...before I realized I am a Child of God..."

John Trapp
overheard at Transmillennial 2006

My freak quotient, revisited

What is is about people on power trips and me? Is there some sort of odor I'm emitting that triggers their inner Napoleon (Bonapart, not Dynamite)?

I took the kids to swim class at the Y this morning. You have to give them your card to get a lock for the lockers, but they lost my card last week so I have a "temporary card". When I checked in, I had a whole conversation with the lady at the desk about this: has my card turned up? (she looked through her little box...an amazing amount of people have lost their cards, but mine was not in the little box) when will the machine be working again to make me a new one? etc., etc. My point here is that I HAD A CONVERSATION WITH THIS LADY IN WHICH WE MADE EYE CONTACT AND TALKED.

10 minutes later, my kids were merrily paddling about the pool. It's, like 1067 degrees in there and I was not created to be able to survive on Mars, so I stepped back out into the lobby for a couple of minutes. I forgot my water bottle, so I went down to the end of the lobby to see how much a bottle of water cost. Deciding that was complete robbery, I started walking back towards the entrance to the pool/sauna area.

Here's where things went wrong. Maybe it was the heat that made me smell or something and her little tenticles went "beep, beep, beep...there's someone who needs a good dressing down!"
Anyway, my conversation WITH THE VERY SAME LADY I HAD TALKED TO 10 MINUTES BEFORE went like this:

Napoleon: "Excuse me, miss, is there something we can help you with?"
Me: "no"
Napoleon: "Only members are alound in the YMCA"
Me: "o.k."
Napoleon: "You can't go back there, miss"
Me: (what's up with the 'miss' bit? my mom used to call me 'little missy' all the time when she was really pissed off, I don't really take to that tone extremely well in my adult years) "my kids are in swim class"
Napoleon: "WELL! I didn't know that. When I ask you where you are going, YOU need to inform me!"

Seriously weird. I need to adopt a more authoritarian countenance somehow. It can't include wearing high heels, though. I gave those up after falling off the porch 9 months pregnant with Zoe, carring 2 year old Olivia. (We'll talk about my grace issues some other day)