Random Gift

When I arrived at work yesterday there was a large grocery bag sitting in front of my office door.  This wasn't the typical plastic grocery bag either, but a huge paper deal with handles like you would find at Panera Bread.  It had a note to take what I want and donate the rest. 

Are you kidding?  What wouldn't I want to keep?

Oh, what was it?  Left over cotton fabric, most of it decades old, all of it very outdated.

And I LOVED IT!

I sought out the mystery gifter and thanked her profusely.  She warned some of it was probably too small to use.  Ha!  I keep some of the tiniest scraps imaginable - I am a true scrap quilter.

She was happy to be rid of it and I was delighted to receive it.

Clearly it's time to return to the basement and start quilting again.

The Punishment of a Day Off

I have a theory that however many days you were off work it will take twice as many to catch up.  So, if you take a week from work it will take two more to get back to normal.

Think about it.  I'm right.

It is with trepidation that I plan to take a few days off next week.  I know the Hell I will be facing when I return.  It's not like they hire Peggy from Account Temps to fill in while I'm gone.  Nope, they pile it all up and wait until I come back. 

And the curse of the IT department everywhere is that even when you're gone you still get panic calls.  I always felt sorry for my supervisors when I had to be the person making that panic call.  With my predesseor it seemed like every time he was 24 hours out of town one of the servers would crash.  EVERY. DAMN. TIME.

Turns out those stupid machines have latched their affections onto me so now when I leave everything falls to shit.

I should feel honored or something.

It's like having a sick kid at home.  At some point you're going to wake up to a vomit soaked munchkin and will spend the next hour restraining your own gag reflex to mop the bathroom, change sheets and hose down the sick kid.  You don't look forward to it, you sure as hell don't enjoy it, but it's just part of the job.

In fact, I would much rather deal with random server-is-down panic calls than a sick kid ANY DAY.

Now the return to work and trying to catch up while getting my bearings and suffering a little post-vacation depression?  I might consider a round with a sick kid as a trade off.

Sunday in My City - Grad Party

Last week I missed posting as I was recovering from the grad party held the previous night.  I may have had a few too many - felt great that night and like hell the next day.  It only makes sense to share highlights today.

The grads were Piranha's college twins.  While they were the stars of the show, they were upstaged by the grandbabies - mine and Booty's.

The most precious part of the whole night for me was seeing all of our kids together.  It's been a long time - they pretty much went their own directions once they got drivers licenses in their grubby hands and discovered jobs, girlfriends, boyfriends, college... *sigh*

 My guy sought out the girls for attention - crawled right up and started babbling.

 Finally the babies drifted to sleep and the party kicked in (ha!  it was in full gear from the beginning - only my attention shifted once the babies left the room).

 

The twins have moved back home while they send out resumes and go on interviews.  For Piranha's sake this won't last too long. 

Dead Refrigerator Woes

I grabbed an ice cream bar from the freezer and noticed a weird fizzing sound coming from the back.  I bent over to see the very bottom shelf (it's a side by side refrigerator) and noticed a redish light.  Like something was trying to spark.  And water was dripping.  From the back.  By the sparking light.  As if the only thing preventing an actual fire was the dripping water!!!!

Being a technology goddess, I knew this wasn't a good thing.

Fortunately we had bought a new refrigerator for the backroom a few years ago.  And let me tell you, having that second fridge has been great for overflow storage especially when I've volunteered to bring a couple of dishes to family gatherings.  This time, however, it was getting every single morsel of food from the main refrigerator.

And I am grateful.

But geez, what a pain in the ass.  This morning I had to pour my bowl of cereal, grab an empty glass and schlep all the way through the house to the backroom to get milk and juice.  So inconvenient.  I have no idea how long we will be down.  This means we have unload all of the crap on top of the kitchen refrigerator and then pull it out and then scrape the gross crusty crap off the floor before we'll let anyone in to assess the problem.  Of course my druthers are that we just replace the beast.

Friday Fragments - May 18, 2012

Turns out this was the last full week of school for my son!  That hasn't really set in yet. 

I updated my calendar with festivals happening through the summer.   I'm not sure if we'll make it to any of them but at least I know when they're happening.  Last Sunday I posted pictures of hot air balloons, something that started a conversation in the car about seeing the Forest Park Balloon Race in September.  The night before there is a balloon glow that I really want to attend.  I made sure to add that to my calendar.

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How many of you still argue and fuss with your siblings?  I make fun of my kids when they do it, but I still torment the hell out of my brothers so I guess my kids come by it honestly.  Last night my brother in Florida posted a sweet tribute to Donna Summer.  I mentioned something about how he first heard her music from my collection when we were kids.  That quickly devolved into "my music collection is way more awesome than yours."

Next week should be interesting as my brother from North Dakota is in town. 

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A former co-worker posted on Facebook that her dad's house is up for sale.  Something about that struck a chord in my imagination.  It struck my husband too.  We've long talked about moving out of this rental house only to face setback after setback.  Last night we actually did a walk-through of her house.  It's nice and would accommodate us nicely, but it's not the house for us.

What this means, however, is the seed is planted.  This was much more than driving through neighborhoods and pointing out what we like and what we can't stand.  This was "let's talk about financing" and what we really want from a bigass purchase.

I was also intrigued to see that my high schooler is actually able to consider changing schools.  This is a concept that I am so absolutely, etched in stone, against that I'm a little shaken by the possibility.  I was genuinely scarred by the multiple moves during my Jr High years that I swore I would never move a kid to a different school during junior high and especially high school.  Mid-year moves, if they can be avoided are very against my standards too.  Dammit, I hate going against my standards.

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Sunday In My City - Chasing Balloons

Our goal last night was to repay a coworker.

She left THESE on the back of my car

So I returned them

Along the way we spotted these in the sky

So we chased down the one that landed

Afterwards we stopped at Culver's for frozen custard

Friday Fragments - May 11, 2012

I need to visit more blogs, I still feel out of the loop.  Maybe I returned from my blogcation too soon.  Then again, it's May and I always feel disconnected with the endless running back and forth.  May has eternally been a busy month for me.

So what are my fragments for this week?

On Sunday my brother, the temporary house guest... and his dogs, departed for Florida.  It's not a decision any of us would make but he's hellbent on getting back to the beach.  ultimately it's his life and he is the one to live with the consequences.  He'll find employment eventually, at least he arranged for a place to stay before he got down there.

****

I decided to let my hair go gray.  In July I stopped coloring my hair.  Last week I finally got the old color cut off.  There are still wisps of "copper" at the tips since she didn't want to cut it too short with all of my curls.  It's a great change, especially before summer.   Best of all, I don't have to fuss with it too much.  In this picture I actually bothered with a curling iron.  Since then I've been letting it dry naturally with a little gel to boost the curls.

****

Ultimate Frisbee season has ended.  The one team they missed due to poor scheduling (I suspect a mother's club is soon to be formed after this screwball season) invited the guys to a scrimmage and BBQ today.  I thought that was a great show of sportsmanship.  In the end it's about having fun so I think they succeeded.

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Today at work was Technology Hell Friday.  We changed internet carriers so we took the opportunity to bring in new network equipment at the same time.  It meant the office was down for a few hours so that's never pretty.  On the upside I didn't have to lift a finger - otherwise that would have been much much more than a few hours of being out of commission.  The guy did a beautiful job.  He even cleaned up the glob of wires in my technology closet!

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Have a great weekend and happy Mother's Day!

Vindicated On My Vitamin Choice

I don't know if I've admitted it here, but I frequently tell people about my vitamin of choice.  Several years ago I was feeling sluggish and thought it was time to bring a daily vitamin into my life.  Comparing contents and, of course, price, it was clear that my childhood favorite, Flintstones Chewables, was going to meet my needs.

Like many things, I'm sure people think I'm being silly.  I really did put a lot of thought into this choice.  I was specifically looking for something with iron as well as a general hodgepodge of healthy sounding stuff.  All of the adult vitamins were outrageously expensive and not all of them had the same mix of the other healthy stuff.  It just made sense.

This morning I came across this bit of validation:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/05/08/vital-savings-on-vitamins-savings-experiment/?ncid=webmail6

Meal Planning

For years I've wanted to try cooking a ton of food on Sunday to last through the week.  What's been holding me back is a general slackass procrastination that I've perfected.

To do all of that cooking, one needs to plan.  What's on the menu?  When will you go grocery shopping?  What ingredients do you need?  How will you store the cooked food?  WHERE will you store it?

That's waaaaayyy too much planning for my head, too much commitment for my moody appetite.

But then my spousal unit suggested something that made preplanned meals a reality.  I was grilling something for dinner (yes I am the grillmaster at our house - I love playing with fire) when he thought I should go ahead and grab the pork roast and toss it on the fire too.  He asked that I not cook it all the way through so he could finish it off the next day in the oven.

No longer do I feel guilty about having a perfectly good fire in my grill, wasting away because I only made hot dogs.  Now I grab all sorts of meat and cook it.  Not all of the cooked food has to be eaten immediately.  We decide what we'll have in the next day or two, the rest divvied into meal sized portions and frozen.  This is more awesome because of the vacuum seal bags allowing to store food in the freezer even longer.


It still allows me to not be in the mood for any given meal on a particular night, so no guilt when I break the schedule.  With all of the pre-cooked food waiting in the freezer we have quick answers on those nights when we're both exhausted and staring at each other wondering what the hell to make.  Seriously, how can that not sing to a slackass procrastinator's heart???

Best of all, I get the yummy grilled taste with lots of my meals and that's just... well, fabulous.

DWEEBY LITTLE BRO

I may not post for days on end but when I'm challenged to post something about my geekass brother, welllllllll... taunt me no further.

This is my youngest brother we're discussing.  The other one is simply a dumbass.  That one has been living with me for a few months and left last night to finally return to Florida.  In a thunderstorm.  In a truck with crappy tires.

But anyways, it turns out I get to see the "little" one and his fabulous bride later this month.  I'm not exactly sure of their plans or precisely how long they'll be in town so maybe after reading this I'll get more of the scoop.  Then again, had I picked up the phone yesterday when SIL called I might have heard about their arrangements.  I did hear how their kids will probably be farmed out to various friends and relatives while in town, but I do have space... you know in case they're reading this.

HA!

Friday Fragments - May 4, 2012

It's noon and I still haven't written anything.  Gah!

My son had a double header frisbee game on Sunday.  He turned fifteen on Wednesday.  We (I) ate pancakes twice this week when we went out to dinner - hey it's what you do when you eat at Dennys and IHOP - not HAMBURGERS, like some people.  I guess their burgers are good but I will never know since I'm a breakfast food junkie.  And, um, not much else is going on in my life.  Oh yes there is, this afternoon I'm going to happy hour.

There  you go, a quick, condensed fragmenty Friday!

My Baby is FIFTEEN!

Fifteen years.  How on earth can I have a child that's been on this planet for FIFTEEN YEARS?  Especially since he's my youngest child?

If you can't do the math, because I sure can't and only know the child was turning fifteen for an entire year because of his endless reminders as this is the year he can get his drivers permit... that would be 1997.

1997, you know back before we were really worried about Y2K, maybe even before we ever heard of it?  We were still speculating what it would be like to "party like it's 1999" - for the record it was a little over inflated and my view of that may have been due to it being a particularly crappy year personally.  My my my, how things have changed since then!

But May 2nd, 1997 - it was a bright, sunny Friday morning and I was getting strapped down for an emergency C-section.  I was terrified and literally shaking.  He was three weeks early, a tad scrawny (half the size of either of his siblings) and needed to stay a few weeks in the NICU.

It may not have been a smooth arrival into this world, but in my heart I knew he was a fighter and would be okay.  He fought and is okay.

Three weeks later I took home a still scrawny baby who had reflux and a serious case of thrush, a fungus that leaves a white coating on the tongue.   The thrush went away rather quickly but the reflux remained.  My friends are still scarred by the memories of handing my mini-puking machine.  He was hard to sooth, hard to feed, and was a light sleeper.   To this day I call him a grazer when it comes to eating, preferring to nibble through the day than commit to proper meals.  His sleeping habits have improved only recently.

Despite it all, he was a happy baby.  He was, and is, easily amused, incredibly inquisitive and has a healthy streak of stubbornness.

Last year he had officially sprouted taller than his sister and me.  His shoulders have broadened and his face is finally losing the rounded child-like features.  He's becoming furry and even has a few curly strands popping off his chin.  He's blond, you can barely tell.  Girls aren't exactly icky anymore, but he also hasn't succumbed to having an actual girlfriend.  After his showers a lovely scent of manly cologne wafts through the house.  I'm used to it now, but it was a little disconcerting the first time I smelled it from his older brother.

Basically, he's no longer a little boy.  He's still young, but he's bursting at the seams to be all grown up and is doing a fine job of it.

This morning I reminded him that in 15 years he will be THIRTY.  ugh.  At least I will still be 28.