Just in case you needed to know, I’ve taken six thousand two hundred and thirteen photos.  Since the beginning of April.  This year.  That’s all.

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Okay, let me preface this with a little explaination.  We are not a big sports family.  I have never really been into sports, and Scott could flat out care less.  Football, basketball, baseball.  None of it.  The only thing remotely close that we enjoy is Monster Jam!  So, I was really bummed when Caleb grew out of his 18mo clothes and I discovered that it is very hard to find cute clothes for little boys!  Why is that?  Girls get all the cute designs and boys get sports and sports.  Sometimes you can find some vehicle stuff, which obviously in this case, is appropriate.  But since I’m anal, it has to be cute vehicle stuff.  Bottom line, I’m picky.  I usually stick to cutesy stuff or just stripes and such.  But I loooove things with animals on them, I have always been drawn to Carters things, so it should come as no surprise to me that the pajamas I found today is the Carter’s line, Child of Mine sold at Walmart.

Look how cute though!

“D is for Digger” & “Good night sleep tight” (footed pajamas)

They have several others that were pretty cute too, I just picked four favorites.  They had some cute blue and chocolate (love the chocolate color!) racoon ones but I couldn’t find his size.  I’m so excited!  If only I got this excited about my clothes…

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You’ve been seeing a lot of pictures lately.  And I’ve been taking a lot.  And feeling about a million miles away.  With writer’s block.  Weird.  Sometimes in stressful situations, I can write and it helps.  Other times, I can’t think of anything to say to save my life.  Or at least I can’t put it down ‘on paper.’  So apparently I just take pictures instead.  You ever have a period of time where the days fly by and at the end of each one, you think, what did I actually accomplish today?  The hours are gone, but you feel like you’re in the same place you started that morning.  And you get up and do it again the next day.

My mother inlaw has been having a lot of health problems lately.  Quite frankly, she gave us all quite a scare.  The doctors determined her heart strength to be significantly lower than it should be.  It was one of those things where, she  felt a little worse gradually, then that became normal, then a little more winded, and then that became normal, until suddenly normal was really a struggle.  Thankfully a defibulator/pacemaker seems to have her feeling a little better, other than recovering strength from the ordeal in the past several weeks, which involved several hospital stays.  The rather ironic part is, two days before a catheterization to determine if there was any type of blockage, she was going down the slide with Caleb at the park next to her house!  I’ll do her the favor of sparing the photographic proof of her deciding 3/4ths of the way down that it might not have been such a wise idea, but she did make it to the bottom with a big smile.

Then there’s the job.  You know, that ugly thing that provides ever cent we need to survive?  Well it has been a battle zone recently.  Uncertainty.  Stress.  Disrespect.  Stress.  Did I mention stress?  You probably don’t want to know the grizzly details.  I’ve been doing everything I can think of to conserve money, spend wisely.  Hopefully this will blow over.  Truly a reminder of nothing is guaranteed, even if you moved into a house that was on the high end of your budget on that premises.

Discovering an empty pool.  A face sad enough to almost put 5000 gallons back in there.

“Picking berries” which he says will grow into a beanstalk that will reach the sky

Caleb received a VW bug from his Auntie, so I once again set about the task of transforming it into Herbie.  This one started off red, so I was forced to add a white base coat this time.  I allowed plenty of dry time (a mistake I made last time because the paint smudged almost immediately), and worked over about a two week period.  Adding three coats of white, then each stripe and the I drew on the 53’s with a paint pen (looked like I had the DTs or something, surprisingly my hand was more steady with the paint brush, go figure), and lastly added the sunroof, bumpers and tail lights.  He was thrilled yesterday morning.  Then he dropped Herbie last night at Walmart and a big chip of paint flaked off!  How disappointing.  He was crushed too.  He just got silent and almost started crying.  It was pitiful.  But we assured him that Herbie could be fixed.  I think I’ll try some clear coat spray over him in hopes that it will give the paint some stability after all my hard work.

He started off red.  Now he is Herbie.  The kid is thrilled.

~ Taken Today ~

I see you.  I hear you.  I just do not intend on looking at you.

The difference between kids and adults: we actually mind laying in the sand, whereas kids, not so much.

Raining today.  We played on the screen porch for a few hours.  Pretty chilly, had to break out the long sleeves.  Listening to the rain was relaxing.

I’ve found solace in my photography.  I sat down one night last week.  Made my rounds online.  No new emails, blog entries, not much going on with the mommy board I frequent.  I sat here staring at the screen.  Scott was already asleep.  Don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I looked up the RAW picture files from the one decent snowfall we had last winter.  I spent the next hour tinkering with them in Adobe Lightroom.  For that hour, I forgot about everything going on.  I got lost in the calm, quiet snow of the pictures below.  I remember that day, it was so quiet you could almost hear the snow fall.  The middle picture is still my favorite.  Especially since it used to be my backyard.

We are heading off on an adventure tomorrow.  An adventure brought about by Caleb’s three year well checkup at the pediatrician.  Yes he’s three and a half.  Shutup.  At least I can say it is our first time going since his two year well visit a year and a half ago!!  So that counts for something.  That plus I can use the -we were moving- excuse.  We were looking at houses right around his birthday, and moving at the end of April.  Then the summer skipped on by and here we are.  It is strange though.  Last time we were there, he wasn’t even talking.  And now he’s up to 100,000+ words per day.

After the pediatrician, we are headed to the children’s museum, always a favorite.  I’m packing lunch and snacks to take along to save some of that green stuff.  In fact, my goal is for tomorrow to be completely free.  With the exception of $4/gallon gas of course.  I have selected a cool castle event venue in hopes of getting some neat pictures tomorrow.  Clothes are laid out, lunches are packed, camera is stowed, plus undies, extra clothes, a small trash bag, napkins, a toilet and a maybe kitchen sink in there somewhere.  Feels like you’re going camping for a week when you leave home with kids on a day trip.  I must say, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to spend the day away tomorrow.  Clear my head.  I sure hope the weather is nice.  The house was just dim all day today and it rained today, and I just wanted to go back to bed.  All. day. long.  Tomorrow will be a good day.  If I can just stop my head from calculating how much every 1000 feet costs to drive (I stay home.  A LOT.).

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned the hard way that some poems don’t rhyme and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, and taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what is going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.” - Gilda Radner

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So, for those of you who don’t know me in person, my hair is really long.  Like really long.  About a year ago, I decided I’d grow it out a bit more and then cut off 10-12 inches for Locks of Love.  I have been needing to just go do it for several months now.  Anyway, Caleb has commented on several ocassions that my hair is very long.  I explained to him that I was going to give it to little boys and girls who are very sick.  I told him I planned to cut off a lot of it at one time so that they could use the hair to make wig.  And that some boys and girls are very very sick and they have to take medicine that makes their hair fall out.  So they will be able to use Mommy’s hair.  I explained in the most simplistic and thorough way I could think of.  He mentions it from time to time.  But today at the table, he was saying something that I couldn’t quite make out.  After several repetitions, I surmised the he was saying something along the lines of…”They are sick, so their penis might fall off.  And I could give dem my penis!”  Where in the world does he come up with this stuff?!  I assured him that nothing short of Lorena Bobbitt would make your penis fall off.  Okay okay, I left out the Lorena part.  I’m sure his future prom date will enjoy stories such as this.  I may even just make a book of my blog as a wedding present for a future wife one day.

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Can someone please explain to me what the government -whoever the hell asked, The Pantry (gas station chain)?- hopes to accomplish by asking people not to get more than 10 gallons of gas???  Was that a conspiracy to get the exact response they desired?  People lined up at the damn pumps driving the price through the roof again?  Instead of the normal amount of people who would have gotten gas this weekend, instead everyone, his brother, cousin and great aunt Sally is lined up with the cars, gas cans and any other container that might hold gas.  People are probably driving their lawn mowers to the station.  I’m gonna start riding a horse just so some of these idiots can step in his crap behind me.

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Helloooooo?

I am still here.  In fact, I had this, not all that long, but somewhat emotional post written last night, and it got eaten.  You may have tried to visit last night and found my website inaccessible.  My internet host, godaddy.com hint hint, seems to have server downtime about once per month now.  This is the third time in the last six weeks or so that my website has been down for a few hours (that I know of).  Maybe those fine people over there could get that fixed?  Of course by the time you email tech support and they get back to you, they say, I have no idea what you’re talking about, I am unable to reproduce the problem you are having, maybe it is your internet.  ANYway, I didn’t notice my auto-save feature was not saving my posts as I typed away, and when I hit publish, everything was down.  I shall return shortly.  Things have been a bit crazy here.

PS, I guess you can tell from the page margins that I have been roaming around behind the scenes in wordpress today :)

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You’re probably wondering where I’ve been or what hole I fell into. I’ve had so much I’ve been meaning to sit down and write about, just no time to do it. I’m sure everyone can relate to that at some time or another.

Tuesday, I had an orthodontist appointment bright and early at 8am. Now that we live 40 minutes away, it complicates things a bit though. I always ask for the first appointment of the day and try to get there early so I can get in and out as quickly as possible. Scott stays home with Caleb, so I’m always in a rush to get right back home so he can leave for work. They were running behind as usual, and when he finally got over to my chair, he looked at my teeth and asked if I wanted to get my braces off that day! Totally unexpected, I thought it would be next visit. So I was really excited to get that done. My teeth are all nice and straight (Again. My second time in braces. This time I did a combination of Invisalign and braces though.)

I can’t even remember what I passed the day doing, but I do remember as soon as Scott got home, we rushed out the door to go meet the newest member of the family. Scott’s nephew and his wife recently welcomed little Levi last month and are in town this week visiting. We didn’t get home until 9ish, and I hurried to get Caleb in the bed so I could prepare for Wednesday. My orthodontist is located where we used to live and where my dad currently lives during the week for work. Since I had to go right back on Wednesday to pick up my retainers, I figured Caleb and I could spend the day at my Dad’s apartment and do some shopping. But this meant I had to pack toys, books to read at naptime, lunch, clothes in case of accidents, etc, etc.

The tropical storm/hurricane, whatever it was, moved through Tuesday night and all day yesterday. It poured. And poured and poured. So much that Scott had to run out and drain some water out of the pool because it was about to overflow (which is probably not good for an easy set pool)! Of course, it was pouring when Caleb and I piled in the car to head out for my orthodontist appointment. I carefully backed out through the river at the end of our driveway (think I’m kidding? pictures below), and headed on my way in amazement at all of the flooding. The drive is through back country roads and it always makes or breaks your trip time depending on who you get behind. For once, I found myself hoping to get behind someone, so there would be a guinea pig in front of me. I could watch where they hit water and know to slow down or scoot over. I slipped several times and the passenger side hydroplaned pretty good one time. It wavered for about three seconds and then I felt the tire grab pavement again. Scary. Driving is an entirely different experience when your whole life is in the backseat. He kept pretty quiet for the entire ride, I think he sensed that I needed to concentrate. I white knuckle gripped the steering wheel so hard the entire way, I felt like I had arthritis by the time we arrived!

Something became evident to me when I came home last night. There are many days where I feel like I’ve done nothing all day, but yet, the day is over anyhow. Well now I see, I must do a lot of things without thinking, because the house looked like a tornado hit. Clothes everywhere, not really even that many toys, but just stuff. Stuff everywhere. Things that needed my attention. Needed to be washed or put away or both. I left all of it last night, and just started immediately this morning. After all, I needed somewhere to feed the kid breakfast!

So I have already cleaned up a bunch of stuff, done some laundry, filled the dishwasher and started it, vacuumed, and put my new steamer to work (more to follow on this newest family member later!). All before lunch. For getting up at 8am, I think that’s pretty good!

So that’s mostly where I’ve been. Just busy. And you know, hanging on to my phone pole for dear life, hoping I didn’t get washed away!

See that river?  It isn’t supposed to be there!

And there’s a curb buried somewhere under there.

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Where I start contemplating the Halloween costume three months in advance. Halloweens past have always been animals. And I’ve found two cute dog costumes to go along with the theme. I asked Caleb, and he just wants to be a chicken again, because last Halloween was the first year he ‘got it,’ and he can’t get the chicken costume = candy out of his head.

But I also found this, and I absolutely love the duster jacket. He would be minus the bullet belt, as we don’t do guns here. Even toy ones. As of yet, not even water guns.

And while browsing, I found this. Which is wrong on way more than one level. Wow. Um, yeah. I’ll leave it at that.

Is anyone now humming “Oops I did it again” in their head?

Is there not ANY other way they could have posed that dog other than doggy sty…nevermind.

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And insert boring content here.

Ya miss me? I have been feeling rather quiet the last few days. We haven’t really been too many places, so I don’t have my usual repertoire of interesting stories.

I could tell you about blowing my lid at Belk after trying to exchange/purchase some items. And how I clearly told the lady the easiest way to do her job…to exchange the items on the receipt for a size smaller and add on the extra items, holding one item on the side to exchange with the item for which I did not have a receipt. She instead rung up all of the items together, which totaled $40 over the exchange, then tried to give me a gift card for the item that was returned without a receipt. Can someone please explain why I would want to pay $40 and then have a $8 gift card leftover?

Or I could write about Caleb giving away my sugar to the WAITRESS this weekend when eating out with my parents! That’s right he hugged our waitress and kissed her on the cheek. Flirt.

Then there was my mom’s visit. My dear mom. The one that still doesn’t comprehend no contact between her dog and our son. Why? Oh no reason other than him coming 1/4 an inch from possibly losing his eyesight in one eye. Because I don’t still get physically queasy when that flashes back in my head since I will never get rid of that image. And I certainly haven’t cried about it twice in the last month. I could go on to explain how she has rationalized an “excuse” in her head as to why it happened. Because he fell on her. No he fell beside her. And it hurt her. No at most it pulled on her collar. And she didn’t mean to react that way. No actually it was a combination of jealousy and she sensed of weakness. And he is now rightfully so afraid of dogs.

So my mom calls wanting me to ask Scott if it is okay if she puts Gilda behind a safety gate in the third bedroom. She has me risk life and limb to dodge the wasps that occupy our storage building entrance to retrieve a gate. And upon her arrival, let’s Gilda roam where ever she pleases and crap in the kitchen floor. She also downright begged that I leave Caleb with her and go to Target. Why should I? She’s obviously shown that, after Gilda attacked my child’s face, she still doesn’t understand nor respect that we do not wish for them to be in the same room together.

So if at this point you’re just feeling depressed and/or speechless, go have a look and a laugh at my finally completed 101 things!! Looka there. It only took me a year and a half to write!

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Some unnamed child is suddenly refusing to go to the potty most of the time.  We’ve had a couple quote unquote accidents today.  I say it like that because there’s no cleanup other than a change of clothes, so I haven’t complained too much, but it is a little frustrating after no accidents and no diapers in a few weeks.    If I’m very attentive, I can catch the -I need to go- signals.  I ask him and he yells no.  If I’m seeing the signals bigtime, I make him go anyhow.  And let me tell you, I’ve drug him kicking and screaming today.  He gets mad and stomps up on the stool, cutting me the evil eye (pictured yesterday, 4th down).  I just try to keep a very flat tone in my voice, matter of fact if you will.  I really wanna say, just get up there and stop being a little shit about it.  But alas, I just bribe.  With M&Ms.  Yep.  I told him no more M&Ms if I have to drag him to the throne, but if he tells me he needs to go, he gets them.  He flew through his second potty chart in four days last week, so I never printed up another one.  I decided we’d bring that back (we’ve now gone exactly a week without it), and see if the extra motivation helped.  If I have to drag him, he still gets the positive reinforcement of a sticker when he goes, but no M&Ms.  And believe me, the M&Ms are way more important to him!  He comes from a long line of sweet tooths.  I explained my strategy no less than four times to make sure we were clear on what equaled M&Ms and what didn’t, so we’ll see.

I’ve been cleaning and straightening up like crazy, as my mother will visiting tomorrow.   And this weekend.  I must say, her impending visit has done wonders for the house.  I cleared off one counter that has continuously been piled with stuff since the day we moved in.  The kitchen looks bigger and brighter now!  I was shocked at the difference.  I still have a good bit left on my to do list though.

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