Working on this and that and the other thing.

Our garden is kind of growing.  Piper (the puppy) felt the need to completely chew up a flowerpot and strew it throughout the garden, that's a piece of it you see in this picture.  I didn't have my shoes on, so I did not get off the deck to pick it up.  Piper's not my dog and I don't feel the need to take any responsibility for her.  I said no more puppies and I meant it, but no one listened to me and we've lost (to chewing) the pool filter, a water hose, a bag of concrete, my daughter's bicycle seat and countless other items to this #$%^&*( puppy.  She's a nice little dog in other ways and someday, she may be all right to have around.  Maybe.  Meanwhile, I'm not mean to her, but every time she does something like this, I get a little mad at my family ...  I'm really disappointed about not being able to swim this summer but with my son's car accident, we don't have the money to replace the pool filter.  Speaking of the accident, today was the day for my son to return to Mississippi and he's on his way now.  He'll have to appear in court tomorrow and pay fines and then the next day, he'll drive back.  I feel very out of sorts and nervous about it. 

Meanwhile, I am working on re-filing my mom's VA claim, working a little at cleaning the house and catching up on laundry and also trying to enjoy my day off a little.  We had a very busy weekend, with me working extra, an overnight houseguest, the random acts of kindness day, church, going back to church last night, working on getting the house ready for photo shots so we can get a home equity line of credit to help pay for the car accident ...I tell you, all of it just wore us out, as evidenced by Freckle's facial expression last night.  She was a very tired girl.  :-)   Whew.

Busy, but pretty good day.

After the year we have had, my expectations for good days have went down, I think.   I am thankful for any small amount of goodness and today had several good things.  I worked this morning and as soon as I finished, we all gave our house a bit of a cleaning, then we headed out with some people from church to do some random acts of kindness.  We visited a young man and his mom who have been having to stay at the hospital for 75 days ... since April 15.  He was in a car accident and had a head injury and is not conscious completely yet.  :-(  His mom has only been home one day for a few minutes.  Otherwise, she has been living at the hospital since April 15. A situation like that makes you thankful for your own situation, I tell you.  After that, we put some RAOK envelopes on some vending machines, some quarters on gumball machines, gave out some water bottles and delivered some goodies to the ER department workers and the fire department.  

Then we went and picked up one of my kid's friends and just as soon as we got back home, I got a call from work, asking me to work this evening.  I just finished and clocked out and it is 10:00 p.m.  My supervisor thanked me profusely for working and complimented me on what a good job I do, and I appreciated that.  It's nice to be noticed for doing good work.  So now I'm tired and I'm going to watch a little CSI and then go to bed.  Whew.

Finally.

Last week, the plants.

It rained and I think our poor rescued plants look better.

Last week ...

This week.

The object on which my daughter cut her foot, necessitating the tetanus shot.  I have no idea what this is, something my husband uses when he grills with charcoal.  I had to describe it about 3 times yesterday. 

We finally got the tetanus shot done yesterday.  Apparently, if it's been more than 5 years, but less than 10 and you have an injury, you have to get one within 48 hours of the injury. I had called the pediatrician's office on Tuesday and they said to come in before 5 for the injection, but my daughter did not get home from babysitting before 5.  So when she finally got home, I called the more local family medical center with evening hours and asked them if they could see her.  They could see her at 12:45 on Wednesday.  So I scheduled that. Then, on Wednesday, about 11:50, I downloaded a 12 minute transcription job by a foreign born dictator that was very, very, very difficult. (Can't return these, it's against company policy).  I finally got finished typing it at 12:45, so we missed the appointment.  I called them to try and reschedule, but they had nothing available.  I called the pediatrician's office and they said to come in between 1 and 5 and they would do it as a walk-in.  So we get there and apparently, they felt, on third thought (after 2 conversations with them by phone) that my daughter needed to be seen by a pediatrician.  So we waited and waited, and waited, and waited.  We got a little silly, the two of us, in an exam room with nothing but the wall mural and an ABC book to entertain us.  We both felt a little old.  :-P.  Finally, a very nice pediatrician we did not know came in and examined the cut on her foot and ordered the shot and after another long wait, the nurse came in to give it.  We waited a few minutes to see if my daughter would pass out ... then finally, at long last, came home.  My plan was to get my aunt and take her to see my mom, but when I called her, she had just gotten home from seeing mom .. her brother had taken her.  I decided to rest a few minutes and then decide whether to go on my own or wait until today and then a nap called my name and I answered and took such a fabulous nap that I didn't even hear the phone ringing.

So, today, I'm going to work, take care of about a million little details of things that need to be taken care of and go see mom.  Whew.  It's been kind of a frustrating week.  

Unusual.

I had an unusual kind of lonely day yesterday.  My husband worked of course, my oldest son worked 7 hours and 15 minutes, which is long for his part time job and my youngest 2 kids went down the street to babysit.  Everyone was gone for around 8 hours and it was just me and the dogs here.  Last week when the kids babysat, they came home around 2:30 so I was kind of planning on that - big mistake.  I was planning to go see mom yesterday, but then my daughter told me that she had cut her foot on a metal part of the grill in the back yard and so I called the pediatrician to see if she needed a tetanus shot.  Turns out she does, so I said I'd bring her to their shot clinic between 1 and 5.  So then, she didn't come home by 5 and I called my doctor's office to see if they could see her and do the shot.  They could today.  So now I have to take her around noon today, come home finish working and then go see my mom today as well.  It seems like I spent all day yesterday waiting and now I have to cramp a lot into one day but that's how it often seems to go.  My daughter has been known to feel like she is going to pass out at the very mention of a shot, so this should be interesting.  :-P

Cooking. Gluten free of course.

Spaghetti ingredients, not complicated.  :-)

It says 20 servings.  I'm trying to stretch that.

Taco soup ingredients, pinto beans, kidney beans, black beans, rotel, taco seasoning and hamburger.

The kitchen picture I took before I started messing it up again. 

I always have these issues about what to do on my day off.  So many things need to be done and there is no way I can possibly do them all, so I need to prioritize.  Today, I need to take pictures of the house for the home equity thingy we are having to do and I want to do some cooking, so we can eat leftovers for the next few days. I kind of cook in bursts lately, cook several meals when I can and then we just eat the leftovers for a few days.  I am very glad that my family are not very picky and are not opposed to eating leftovers.  I can stash a couple of pots of soup in the fridge and know that they will be eaten.  With my oldest son home, that means I have 2 young men eating here for the summer and they eat quite a bit.  Whew.  The other day, for example, I browned and crumbled 3 pounds of ground beef and seasoned it for tacos and it was all gone in 1 meal except for about half a cup.  All gone!  So today, with meat prices being what they are, I am going to stretch 5 pounds of hamburger with beans and rice and vegetables, in order to fill up my big eaters less expensively.  I think I am going to make taco soup, cowboy stew, Zatarain's dirty rice, hamburger or taco pie and maybe spaghetti.  I have a doctor's appointment so I may just make the first couple of things, freeze the rest of the hamburger cooked and make the others later in the week, though I have no doubt, if I cooked all of that today, Monday, that by Wednesday night, they'd be asking me what I was going to cook again.  :-P.    And if I don't cook anything, they revert to sandwiches as their stand-by meal, which is fine for the gluten eaters whose loaves of bread cost less than a dollar, but for we gluten-free eaters, we need to keep sandwich eating to a minimum. 

I may also do a bit of cleaning today.  We'll see.  I don't feel well, but then I pretty much never, ever do anymore, so I just have to ignore that and clean anyway ...

The dirty rice is gluten free as are the baked beans we like to eat with it

For now I am off to take pictures of my kitchen, which my husband cleaned up yesterday (!) before I mess it up again.

Cowboy stew ingredients, canned potatoes, corn, tomato sauce, more potatoes, italian seasoned tomatoes, rotel jalepenos and garlic.  

This and that and a wedding.

We went to a wedding last night.  It was a cute couple and a cute wedding.  The food was excellent and we had a good time there, surprisingly, because I'm not usually a fan of weddings.  After we got home, I did some art journaling (of course) and when I was ready to get up out of my seat, Max was in the way, so my daughter picked him up and moved him onto the bean bag chair with her.  He looks shocked, here, post move, like "what just happened?"  He's a funny thing anyway. 

 

I don't have any pictures of the wedding, we forgot to take any photo devices except my phone and I don't have the cord to connect that to anything to blog with those pictures and it's not a smartphone, so it doesn't even do internet.  We did use it to snap some pictures of the sunset, which was spectacular, while we were driving home.  as

These 2 art journal pages, in Spanish, were a request of one of the women who work in the facility Mom is in and I can't wait to give them to her.  I hope my Spanish is okay.  I have no idea.  :-)  

I'm not sure when I am going to go back there.  I went day before yesterday and if Mom were home or nearby, I'd go visit again today, basically every other day, but with her current location being almost an hour away and gas prices being what they are, I am having to cut down to 2 days a week.  this is difficult.  I am still trying to get my footing, find out how to deal with my new routine.  A lot of things have changed recently, my job, my husband's job, my son being home and his job, the homeschoolers being out of school (and not doing housework, which is going to have to change soon), mom's new facility, etc. and I can't figure out what day to go to the grocery and the library, when to clean, when to do laundry, I can't get a new routine started ... and so everything's just kind of a mess around here.   Soon, we need to start our summer decluttering and cleaning projects, but for now, we are just trying to feel the new rhythm and get going in it.  It's kind of disorienting, when so many changes happen around the same time. 

Pitiful garden and journal pages.

The plants are very dry and they were the leftovers that no one wanted so we are trying to save them,   I admit that they are pitiful.   I hope that they survive.  

Large quantity of journal pages,  removed from their books and ready to sell ... I hope.

Garden, mom update and friends.

So my father in law has a greenhouse and sells plants.  This is the time of year when he's ready to shut that part of his business down and he gave me a ton of plants that he was going to throw away because they didn't sell.  Today, while I was visiting my mom, the kids put the plants in the ground for me.  I'm so excited, all these nice veggies and flowers in the backyard now!  I'll take pictures tomorrow when it's light out.  I went this afternoon, got my aunt, went down to visit mom and then took my aunt back home, so I was gone quite a while.  We had a pretty good visit with Mom.  She's not completely happy and relaxed there but she has only been there for 6 weeks.  She's still not sure where she is.  Part of me feels like she should be home in her own home, but I know that we could not afford to stay with her all the time.  I've done the math a million times.  Also, there's no guarantee, with this darn disease of Alzheimer's, that she would know where she was at home.  I do think she would be better in that sense, but she would still worry constantly about whether she had enough groceries or money, which are the two main things that stress her out.  There's just no happy solution with this disease, but the place where she is, they do care for her, they are trying to get to know her and her likes and dislikes and they are trying to help her make friends.  I think it might be the very best we can do.  :-(

We get to see some of our peeps tomorrow so another thing to be happy about.  

Father's Day

We went out to eat then to see where my in law's are building their new home and of course had to climb on the piles of dirt, some of us anyway.  My father in law gave us a ton of garden plants, so now we will get to grow a garden this year!  I love having a garden, but I hadn't taken the time to go get any plants, so now we have freebies.  Fun.   It sure was a beautiful day.  My oldest had to work or he would have been the first one on top of the dirt pile.  :-) 

Checking off a few things.

We have a modest schedule this summer.  I'm working.  My husband is working ALL the time now.  My oldest son just got a part time job at a local grocery.  My daughter has graduated high school, my youngest son has finished 10th grade.  We have some casual plans to meet up with friends and some things that need to be done, like cleaning and decluttering.  We have plans to visit mom as often as we can.  And that's it.  I think.  Sometimes a bit of down time is what you need.  We still have my oldest son's trip to Mississippi to appear in court for his car accident looming over our heads and we are all a little worried about how we are going to pay for that, but we can't worry every minute, so we are trying not to focus on it too much and trying to enjoy the oldest being home and enjoy the summertime as much as possible without spending any money.  :-P   The youngest 2 are plotting/planning about how to spend his birthday money and whether they should work on building a tree house ..

Art journal pages

I don't think I've been art journaling quite as much lately.  I am not as stressed because my mom is doing reasonably well, so maybe that's why.  Officially these are all for sale now, as we are trying to raise money to help pay for my son's car accident.  :-( 

The youngest.

He's turning 16 today!  I cannot believe it.  He was 6 when we started homeschooling and started this blog.  Here are a few youngest quotes to brighten your day. 


2005
In the middle of a big play session involving light sabers, toy axes and flip flops, my daughter said to my youngest son, "You're evil." He said "I am not. I am a Shin Dan warrior." She said "Me too." and he said "We both are, but we don't know it." 


I had a coupon for onion rings this week. They are a rare treat for my husband and I. The kids don't care for them at all. My youngest son came in where I was working and asked me to go in the kitchen and make him some toaster streudel (another coupon). I said "Daddy's in there, why don't you go ask him?" He said "There are onion rings in there!" I said "There are onion rings in here too." and he said, "Yeah, well, not enough to annoy me."

2007

My youngest and I just had a conversation. He said "what time is it?" and I said "10:14." He said "what time are we going to bed?" I said 10:30. He said "11:00." I said "10:30." He said "10:45." I said "10:30." He said "10:35." Finally, he said "10:31!" and I said "okay". So now the kids get to stay up later tonight.

The youngest got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, grouchy. My daughter said that he needed us to get out the "bouncy thing". It's this inflatable bounce house made by Six Flags that the kids get in. It's relatively small and will fit in our living room, so it's a good thing to pull out on rainy days or when someone's cranky. Apparently, it worked and put him in a better mood. I heard him a few minutes later quoting Hank the Cowdog. He said dramatically "I'm rising from the ashes like the mythical Tucson." LOL. 

My youngest 2 kids were doing that trust exercise, where one person basically falls backward, trusting the other person to catch them. I heard my daughter say "You don't trust me!" and youngest son said "It's not you, it's gravity I don't trust." 

2008

Youngest son has also invented what may be the newest breakfast sensation since Seinfeld's "muffin tops". His invention is called "Muffin Plottoms" and they have coffee, with sugar and creamer already in it, inside the muffin. He hasn't figured out all the details on how to do this yet, but if anybody can, it would be him.

I just have to share a cute thing my youngest said last night.  He's really been into magic tricks lately and has bought some marked cards at dollar tree.  He'll tell you to pick a card, then stare at the back of it for 5 minutes, squinting, and then tell you what your card is.  It's cute.  Last night, he was practicing a new trick, over and over again.  Finally he said "I can't do it.  I keep trying this trick on myself but I can't get it right.  I'm not trying to amaze or astonish myself, but just to get it to work.  I don't know what I'm doing wrong." 

2009
On the way to the fair yesterday, while I was pumping gas, I had the kids run into the gas station/convenience store to get some snacks.  They came out with some Hostess cupcakes on sale for 1 dollar a pack (2 cupcakes in a pack.)  Way cheaper than fair food where a hamburger alone will run you 6 dollars (no fries, no drink!), but way more than those same cupcakes would have been at the grocery store.  Our grocery store had them on sale this week for 8 cupcakes for 2.50.  I told the kids this and grouched a little about convenience store prices.  My youngest said "Convenience stores have inconvenient prices."  I couldn't agree more.


2011
Yesterday when I tried to wake the youngest up, he said "Technically, since I'm in the top bunk, I am "up".  I'm up and horizontal.   What you want is for me to be down and vertical."  Who else can say things like that the very second they wake up?  Not me, that's for sure!

2013

I was pondering whether to clean the bathrooms tonight or wait until tomorrow.  While I was thinking about this, I was doing a bit of laundry and going back and forth through the house.  My youngest son had started making himself some pancakes during the beginning of my wanderings.  When I came back into the kitchen, my daughter was standing over the pancake pan, spatula in hand and she asked me what she should do for her cleaning today, the part that counts as school.  I said, "Hey, why don't you get the bathrooms?"  She said that she doesn't do bathrooms, which is true, (but its also true that I use my bathroom cleaning as leverage sometimes, so it's all good).  My youngest son remarked that when he gets his own house, he will not clean his bathrooms, he'll just invite his sister over and then start cleaning them but doing it obviously wrong and she will fall for this and clean the bathrooms for him.  She said  "That won't work.".  He grinned at me, while leaning lazily against the kitchen counter and said "And yet, I'm not making my own pancakes right now. ;-)

LoL.   

Funny things I almost typed.

Saturday was a bad day for me for almost-typos.  Fortunately, the way I edit, with 2 spell checks and then a general look over the whole report, I catch most of these.  (My Quality Assurance spot checks are good, so I must be doing okay.)  These are a few of the near-miss almost mistakes I made and caught and changed (with pictures!)  What a difference one letter can make!  

So the first one I typed was heron addiction.  

Isn't that some kind of bird?

And the second one was rug abuse.

I tend to make this one a lot, I really have to watch for it.

 And the third one of the day was underling eating disorder, which I typed instead of underlying eating disorder.

Underling what?!

Pictures, random of course.

On our little mini-Va-cay, we did some hair styling.

We crossed the Ohio river.  That is one big river.  Seriously.

There was road construction basically the whole way. 

The rose bush is climbing the cedar tree.  We saw this when we came back.

A graduation party last weekend.  We went to a couple of these, but my daughter did not want to have one for herself, so we didn't throw one.

The chest of drawers in my mom's room at the memory care facility including 2 of my drawings.

Big plans.

We are going to my friend's house in Indiana today.  The girls are going to camp in the family room, the moms are going to be in the living room and the boys are going to camp outside and we are staying all night.  Is that crazy or what?  Old lady sleepover time!  I wonder if we will sleep?  I guess we'll live if we don't but the old people don't seem to bounce back as quickly from no sleep.  :-P  Still, it's fun and it's an adventure and after the year I have had, having anything to look forward to is awesome. 

Fun times.

One of my homeschool buddies has loaned us a couple of her kids for a couple of days.  We've been having fun.  They are right now having fun with, of all things, the Myer's Briggs Personality Type test, trying to figure everyone out.  I am apparently an INFJ according to the way I answered the quesitons.  I think that's partly correct.  Here's the description

INFJs direct their energy inward. They are energized by spending time alone and have a few close friends. They are independent and deliberate. INFJs are highly intuitive and are deep thinkers. Their thought process is complex and abstract. They are idealistic and future-focused.

INFJs are Feelers that make decisions with their heart. They are empathetic, warm and caring. INFJs are often quick at their tasks and enjoy finishing them. They seek closure. INFJs lives are scheduled and structured. They have a controlled and organized nature.

Except for that last part.  I'm not controlled and organized.  I'm chaotic and messy a lot of the time, but mostly, when I am supposed to be someplace, I'm there.

It's been interesting doing this.  :-)

Now they are playing Curses the board game.

Fun times.

Pretty day.

It was a really pretty day yesterday.  I went to visit my mom and had a pretty good visit.  We played Bananagrams and looked at pictures, walked around and looked at the garden and talked with some of  the other residents.  She's not doing as well as I wish she was but she's doing pretty well.  I would like for her back pain to go completely away and along with the Alzheimers, but we can't always get what we want and this seems to be our best option right now.

My son went on a walk and took these pictures with his new phone, then came in and had to take a Zyrtec.  Pretty weather, lots of pollen in the air.  That's Kentucky.  ;-)