Monday, April 30, 2007

Hours of Fuzzy Entertainment

Shani's kids are here, playing outside. My kids are here, playing inside. Except Felisa - she's outside with the Others (the ones who haven't been afflicted with the I Can't Go Outside for More Than 5 Minutes Or I'll Die Disease).

Unfortunately for two fuzzy black caterpillars, they have been discovered. And sentenced to hours of fun.... being picked up and dropped over and over again, interspersed with crawling up the screen door and hiking across endless expanses of kid.

Fun, huh?

Now I get to leave the kids and caterpillars in the care of "Uncle Ron" while I escape to watch Ryan at swim class...

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Psychological Trauma... one possible answer to the mess!

Well... I decided one possible answer is... you clean it or I clean it. And when I clean it, it's going in the trash. Bella said no. Felisa said yes. Poor Ryan got caught in the middle. He didn't actually make much of the current mess so I wasn't forcing him to join the clean-up. He did go down to the basement in a heart-breaking, screaming, crying fit when I headed to the front door with a box full of Little People. Poor guy. He doesn't even hardly play with them but yet he didn't want me to throw them away. Felisa started to sing a different tune also when I got to the door. Oh, you mean throw them away... I thought you just meant I don't have to clean up 'cuz you're gonna do it for me. After all, they Hate to clean up and they're Too Tired to clean up. Yet they are never too tired to make a big mess of course.

So I admit... I caused psychological trauma to my children today. Too bad the ones it was meant for didn't feel it as much as the innocent bystander...

Optimistic or Delusional?

Ron was gone this weekend. He took Felisa to NM for an extended weekend visit. While they were gone, I was able to keep the main level of the house picked up (we had dinner guests last Saturday and stamp camp here on Thursday evening so things were recently decluttered and thereby giving me a headstart) while they were gone. At least until the last day when I gave up on it. I also did 10 pages in my scrapbook, took care of various commitments (church, soccer, etc), went on a field trip to the Garden Show, and fed the kids. Bella had a sleepover at Grandma D's on Friday and a couple afternoon playdates as usual so some of the time there were only 2 of us here. All of the weekend activities happened fairly easily.

Fast forward to today... third full day since Ron and Felisa have returned... I am exhausted. The house is a trail of destruction from one square foot to another. Ryan's boat for scouts was completed just in time. Dinner was cooked each night - sort of. My uniform was put together just in time. We didn't finish all of Ryan's reading homework because at 10:00 last night, I decided it was just too late and sleep was more important.

So the first question is... is the status of my life in a house of 5 a reflection of a certain person or persons or is it more a reflection of total numbers? For example, a house of 3 just runs easier than a house of 5. Or maybe Felisa is the main trouble-maker and her abscence made things go more smoothly. I'm leaning more towards the total numbers theory. While Felisa does contribute a large portion to my required actions each day, she is getting older and more self-sufficient and therefore less of a time-and-energy-hog, moving her into "just one of the numbers" category. The difference between life here over the weekend and the life here since Monday afternoon is so vast that it just really has me wondering why.

And now for the title post question... Am I optimistic or eternally delusional? I would say that I am generally an optimistic person. But when pondering the state of my home and whether it will ever change I'm not so sure. I guess, in a way, I am optimistic because at the end of the day, when I am just too tired to care anymore and have thrown in the towel, leaving all that is undone to be done another day, I think that "Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I will get everything done." Yet this NEVER happens. So am I optimistic or suffering from delusions of possible future success that will never come to fruition?

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Need a girlfriend? Ask Ryan!

So he's only 7... doesn't matter. Ryan already knows where to find a girlfriend!

We were listening to the radio on the way home from school the other day. A commercial came on for Post Rewards. It works pretty much like every rewards program - by certain stuff, get other stuff for free. In the commercial, the rewards customer says that he will have enough rewards soon to give his girlfriend flowers then take her out to dinner at a nice restaurant. "Now all I need is a girlfriend" he says at the end of the ad.

Ryan pipes up from the backseat... He should get a girlfriend from the Rewards program. Sure, I say, but I don't think they offer girlfriends as prizes. Ryan replies, they can just send a letter that says go to e-harmony.com to get one.

I was cracking up!

So, good news for the e-harmony ad company- your commercials are definitely getting the message out...

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to say...

I'm sick AGAIN. Enough already for cryin' out loud! Nothing too horrible this time, just a head cold but still. I'm the one who doesn't usually get sick yet I've been sick at least once/month since December. This is April. Which makes that 5 different illnesses this winter. Technically it's spring but you can't tell by the weather forecast! Cloudy and cold. And rainy. And cold. And cloudy and cold. Blah! Supposed to be better by Friday though... yippee!

Ron's parents were here for Easter/Spring Break. I definitely recommend importing Grandparent Entertainment Power for week-long school breaks. I certainly would have gone crazy had I been stuck here with my children all alone all day every day for a week. That's the stuff of horror movies I tell ya!

Ryan had his first soccer game last weekend. Awesome! He played well. He ran hard. He got right back up after each and every fall. He even took a soccer ball to the face - OUCH! A bit of a bloody nose and a short time-out then he was right back out there. Can't tell you how proud I am of him. Yea Ryan!

I completed multiple scrapbook pages this week... yea, me! I went to a friend's house on Monday afternoon. The kids played and we worked on our books for a couple hours. Then today I did about 3 more pages from way back in 2002... so much for that goal of more than one-year's worth of pages completed each year. It has now been almost 2 years since I started working on my 2oo2 photos. I'm on September. Ay yi yi... at this rate, I'll never get caught up!

And that's it for now. I'm in the middle of a page but I can't finish because everytime I go down to work on it, Felisa follows me and gets all in the middle of everything. Oh well... maybe tomorrow. Since it's almost 7 p.m. and I have to bathe the children tonight and do laundry so I can pack Felisa's bag tomorrow (she's going on vacation to NM with Daddy!) and I'm still congested, I just know I won't make it back down to my office tonight.

And that's all I have for you today...

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Do you know your states?

I found a link to this site which asks you to list all 50 states in ten minutes. Spelled correctly. You can list them in any order and your answers will automatically be arranged alphabetically.

The good news for this Wednesday morning... I DID IT! Woo-hoo! Such a sense of accomplishment. I almost feel silly about how excited I was to successfully list all 50 states. State capitols would be a different case entirely though, I must admit. I got a little nervous when I had only 5 1/2 minutes left and 3 states left. I went in order around the country so my input list was in a different order than the alphabetical answers list. I tried not to panic and just think it out. After all, I wasn't being graded and if I didn't pass the "test" no one would ever know. Turns out I left a big whole where Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi are. But... I found them (in my head) with 4:46 seconds to spare.

I'm so smart. Or not... :)