sunday sweep - volume II

It's time again for another Sunday Sweep! What a random week this turned out to be. Whatever happened to having a "regular" work week without chaos? I was truly looking forward to getting back to work after the holidays and having some sort of normalcy in the schedule. Yeah, right! Not last week.

Ice: Monday morning brought massive ice to our area, though it wasn't apparent until I actually got out there on the roads. We started off to school and once realizing the roads were a mess I started second guessing if I should have watched the weather report to see if there were any school closures or delays. By now we were halfway to school so I figured I'd might as well keep going. They were there.....so far, so good. After dropping off the little man it was time for me to snake my way across town to the Interstate. We live in an area where there is just no easy way to get to the Interstate - good or bad weather. Deciding to take the heavier traveled roads in hopes the city had sanded and the ice wasn't as bad was a good idea. But arriving at the top of the hill that takes me down to the basin where I hop onto the Interstate I determined there was no way I was going to keep going. Traffic was backed up all the way up the hill, and then some, and the radio was reporting an accident between my "hop on" and "hop off" points. At the last possible road I turned off and snaked my way back home for a few hours to wait on the thaw out.

Snow: Tuesday morning was only better in the fact you could actually see what you were contending with before stepping foot out the door. Snow. This time I had the news on and scoured the local news sites on the internet for delay notices. At 6:30am our school district finally posted a 2 hr late start - right around the time the snow stopped falling. Figures. Even worse than the snow was the rain that started immediately after turning the roads into a slushy mess and squelching any hopes of taking advantage of the delay and playing in the snow before school/work. Ah the joys of living in the Pacific Northwest! Making matters worse as the morning dragged on I started feeling like total crap. Upset stomach, slight headache, and overall feeling like shit didn't sit well for spending a day at the office, so after dropping off the kiddo I turned around, came home, and slept. And that's all I did for the next 3.5 hrs. At 2:10pm I got my lazy ass out of the recliner and made a cup of tea. Two sips later my cell phone rang. It was the school. The little man had thrown up (in the bathroom, thankfully!) and I headed out to pick him up. Not really sure what either of us had/were fighting but the rest of the night went by without racing to the toilet, and after a long and solid night's sleep, we were good as new the following morning.

They're just words: Speaking of toilets, as witnessed on many of my posts (including this one) I have a potty mouth. For the most part, I try to temper my mouth around the little man. Do I think he's not going to hear it somewhere else? Hell no! Not the point. I think it was Marni who was recently talking about her kids making up their own cuss words. Well, the same thing's been happening around here. In fact, there's two new phrases added in the last week - "What the heyhawtie?" and "Jeepers McCreepers". I'm sure you can figure out both of them without me telling you what they're replacing. "Jeepers McCreepers" actually started out as "Jesus McCreepers" and was modified due to me being pretty damned sure the parochial school he attends wouldn't want him using "Jesus". After a couple other renditions including "Molly McCreepers" and something else I can't remember right now, he settled on "Jeepers McCreepers". Whatever works.

Uplifiting news: Turning things to a more serious topic, I am thrilled to report on the arrival of my new Victoria's Secret bras. Hehe! You may remember last week the reporting on my complete devastation in walking into a nearly empty VS at the local mall. Well, I remedied that one. Not only did I order and receive my precious uplifting bras, I got them at the 50% off price AND found an online coupon for FREE shipping. Ya know ya gotta love anything that's FREE!! The girls are happy, happy now! And if they're happy, I'm happy. Except for my ever growing muffin top that I still haven't done a damned thing about. I'll be blogging more about that one later today.

For now, I'm off to grab a quick shower, figure out what's for dinner (maybe one of Liss' new recipes), and park my butt in the recliner to watch football. With the Seahawks losing yesterday I haven't decided who I'm backing now, but if I were a betting woman (which I'm not) I'd say the Packers are a shoe in.

Wishes for a fantabulous week for all of you!

wesleyisms on pain

A couple of days ago:

WJ: "My heart hurts."
Me: "What do you mean 'your heart hurts'?"
WJ: "It just hurts."
Me: "Well, you've got to be more specific than that. Is it beating fast? Does it feel like someone's pinching it?"
WJ: "Uh huh!"
Me: "Which one?"
WJ: "Both."
Me: {sighing} "Show me where it hurts."
WJ: "Right here" beating on the center of his chest.
Me: "That's not your heart. That's your chest."
WJ: "Oh. Okay, nevermind then."

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Yesterday, while shooting hoops:

WJ: "Ouch! My leg hurts."
Me: "Why?"
WJ: "I've been running all day for an hour."

Uh... alrighty then!

and, what if?

I know all of you with kids have had this happen to you - the fixation on a certain subject, or specific terminology. Lately around here it's been 'what if?'. I don't know when it started, maybe a week or two ago, but it's driving me nuts. And it can be about any subject. Oh, yeah, there's also 'and'. I'll talk about that one later on down this post. For example, I've heard the following 'what if's?' just in the past few days.

What if you hit that guy in front of you and he ran off the road and bounced off that tree and then came back around behind you? (heard while driving to school in the morning)

What if you walk in and they say 'blah blah, okay bye'? (heard when trying to answer the question of how long my interview was going to last)

What if they let us collect onehundredgazillionbillion seeds to feed the birds? (heard while playing one of the games on his Leapster)

What if I were a giant and my teacher was in outerspace and I came over and picked up the world and ate it... the whole world? (heard on the drive home from dinner the other night)

And these are just the recent 'what if's?'. There's that 'and' again. Seriously, I could fill a notebook with all the 'what if's?' I've heard in the past few weeks. When this first started, I actually tried to answer the questions. Now I'm at the point of asking 'WTF?'. So that's what I told him. Well, not really. What I said was, "The next time, and every time after, you ask me 'what if whatever' I am going to answer you with 'what if?'". I'm sure you can imagine where that's gotten me. {sigh} I can only hope this phase will pass soon. I don't care 'what if?'.

So the 'and' thing. Apparently they've learned at school that it's not correct to start a sentence using the word 'and'. I'm guilty of doing this here on my blog more than I care to admit. Whatever. It's my blog and I'll write it any way I feel like even if it isn't grammatically correct. Sometimes I really hate school. But my writing isn't the point. And yes, I know starting a sentence with 'but' isnt grammatically correct either. Sue me. The point is he was reading to me and whatever book it was started a sentence with 'and'. "You're not supposed to use 'and' to start a sentence," I was told. "Yes, I know" I responded. "Then why are they doing it?" he asked. Which could have started a whole discussion on why writers take liberties in their writing, and how even though there are rules of grammer sometimes they aren't followed, leading to sometimes rules in general aren't followed and it's not always neccessarily bad to not follow all the rules all of the time. Well, you get the point. Instead, my response was "I don't know. Why don't you ask your teacher?" Hehe.

On that note, since I know you've been missing me posting the Joke of the Day, I leave you with this.

Pearl: Rachel is a terrific housekeeper.
Shirl: Why do you say that?
Pearl: Because she's been divorced three times and has kept all three houses.

somewhere between childhood and becoming an adult

At some point on the road of parenting you expect to have conversations with your children about being a parent. Not at the age of six and a half (the "half" being very important to acknowledge to this six year old)!

The other day, while driving WJ to school, he was in a chatty mood. Normally he's quiet on the morning drives - one of the very few times he's quiet all day long. Our drive is only 10 minutes long so we don't usually get into deep conversations, but on this morning (after having been forced to be home for two days because apparently "some" people live too far from school to be able to get there safely when there's a mere 2" of snow on the ground) he chose to talk about parenting.

"When I am a father I will drive my children to school and pick them up too."

"Uhm... maybe," I mumbled.

"I don't know whether I'll have more than one or just one kid though," he continued.

"....." (Huh? I'm trying to concentrate on looking for ice patches on the roadway and he's talking about having kids???)

"And I don't know what I'll name them either."

Peering in the rear view mirror and seeing him lost in thought, looking out the side window, I say, "Well, you have a long time to think about that."

"Mmmhmm."

As I've later been informed by another parent of the male species, he won't have to worry about the naming. I think I'll leave that discussion for sometime in the very distant future.

the hurdle

I truly thought about taking a day off from blogging. In just less than 3 hours I would have succeeded.

With playing catch up on the homefront, I spent the day finishing the Christmas gift wrapping and scrubbing the house from top to bottom to get rid of the nasty cold germs that might be lingering. I am tired. Not just physically, but emotionally as well.

I spent the evening with my son. Initially we were both doing our own thing. He watching TV and playing. Me reading. At some point in the early evening he wandered into the living room and said the words I've been longing to hear. "I'm going to miss you on Christmas Mommy."

We spent the next hour talking about how we would spend our Christmas - apart. How and why his father and I divorced. How much we love and depend on and care for each other. We took silly pictures. Laughed. Cried. Spent much needed time together.

I am drained.

The hurdle I've been avoiding for weeks doesn't seem so high anymore.

Because we have each other.