Snippets and Tidbits

Today was the official day to submit your taxes, even though I did hear that if you lived in this area they would actually give you until Thursday because of the storms. I’m not really sure why storms, late in the season, would be a good reason to extend the tax deadline by another two days when there had been virtually 2.5 other months to prepare your taxes, but who am I to decide? I did my taxes long ago and have already gotten back my meager refund (no complaining here, that’s the way it’s *supposed* to work. Uncle Sam doesn’t pay me any interest, why should I loan him my money for free??) and I’ve spent it on a new mattress and some paint for my room. That’s right folks, I reinvested it right away! My back is happier already.

The above picture is someones coin balancing creation. Must have taken a patient and steady hand to create something like that.

The other taxing issue has been all the media about the VA. tragedy. Like Cheryl, I turned off the media yesterday. I’ve read news about the gunman and kept up with the latest- meaning the new developments- but I don’t need to hear the popping of gunfire from a cell phone camera and I certainly don’t need to hear the repetitive hype over and over again. It’s like an old Don Henley song….

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
Comes on at five
She can tell you bout the plane crash with a gleam
In her eye
Its interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry

Can we film the operation?
Is the head dead yet?
You know, the boys in the newsroom got a
Running bet
Get the widow on the set!
We need dirty laundry

You dont really need to find out whats going on
You dont really want to know just how far its gone
Just leave well enough alone
Eat your dirty laundry

Some good news would be welcome now and then… we don’t need hours and hours of bad news. Someone once told me that it’s news because it’s unusual.. if it were the norm, it wouldn’t be worth airing.

On Friday evening, we went out and visited some friends at a local bar. My husband and I take turns as to who imbibes unless we have a designated driver and on Friday I was feeling so jittery, that I thought a drink would not be a bad idea. While we were visiting with friends, a man from the table next to us started talking to me about some CD’s someone had brought for me. This led to a conversation about music, bands and what songs we liked. Unlike some couples, my husband does not get jealous when another man talks to me. He knew when he met me that most of my friends were male and that trend hasn’t seemed to change but for a very few women whom I hold dear.

For some reason, this particular guy seemed so familiar to me and I *knew* that I knew him from somewhere. Our table and his table started playing a question game and after a few rounds it occurred to me where I knew him from. Eventually it was my turn and I asked him, “Do you teach soccer?” This question floored him. Not only was it a bit out of line from the previously slightly raunchy questions, but I could tell he hadn’t recognized me yet and was wondering how I knew this about him. I waited while he sat there agog and then asked him if he remembered my daughter, Heather. I knew he would; he and she had a great coach/student relationship. Suddenly, recognition dawned on him and he scrunched up his face and said, “oh… I loved Heather… and Frank… and Sean… and Liberty..” He had taught them all at our local middle school and coached soccer for Heather at the high school. He was one of the few teachers that had been a positive role model in my kids time at that terrible middle school and it was great to catch up with him. I called Heather on the phone and let him talk to her and then Jr. stopped by and so did Liberty so it was a mini reunion. When we were leaving he said it was one of the best parent teacher conferences he’d every had.

On Saturday, I had a fuzzy mouth and a bit of a headache. I thought it was because I had overindulged a bit the night before and I thought that the reason my voice was cutting in and out was because I had been talking in a loud bar for most of the previous night, so Frank and I agreed to go bowling later that evening with our friends, Dave and Jenny. Dave bought bowling balls for Jenny and I this past Christmas and after she and I had the balls drilled, we needed to try them out on the lanes. Yeah, I know it’s April, we’ve been busy!! The people on the lane next to ours liked my ball- it’s a giant Yellow Happy Face!! I get a kick out of watching it’s happy little smile smash all the pins! Ok, I’m strange… I admit it.

We left the bowling alley and I realized that I had nowhere to sleep at home. I had given my old bed and mattress to my son that day and was expecting delivery of a new bed today… not sure why it didn’t occur to me that I’d have nowhere to sleep, but Jenny very kindly said I could stay with her for the night since her daughter was out of town. Thanks again, Jenny!!

Of course, Jenny may be cursing me in a few days, but I really hope not, because overnight my scratchy voice and what I thought might be the remnants of a hangover actually became a very congested cold…ugh… and to top that off, Frank had developed a fever overnight and was complaining of a headache and nausea, something Dave had dealt with recently as well. I thought a pot of chicken soup would be in order so I made a very simple recipe that neither one of us felt like eating. Guess I know what my dinner is tomorrow!!

My mattresses came, by the way, and that means I get to go try out my new bed… first one in 15 years. Goodnight

I had wanted to make a sweetbread for Easter breakfast, so I went on line and searched www.allrecipes.com until I found a simple recipe. It said I needed 3 tubes of refrigerator biscuits, 2 cups of white sugar, 4 tablespoons of cinnamon, ½ cup chopped pecans and ¼ cup melted butter. I was supposed to cut each biscuit into fourths, dredge them in the cinnamon sugar mixture and then layer them in an 8 inch cake pan. Next I was to melt the butter, add the remaining sugar mixture and pecans to the butter and then POUR that over the biscuits. Lastly, I was to bake at 375 for 40 minutes and remove when golden brown.

I got out the biscuits, mixed up the cinnamon and sugar, cut the biscuits into fourths and began to layer them into the pan. After coating the biscuit bits, I melted the butter and added the remainder of the cinnamon sugar mix. I’m not sure how many of you are bakers, but does 2 cups of sugar and ¼ cup of butter sound right to you?? There was NO way to POUR this over anything. So much for following the directions to a *t*. I added another ¼ cup of melted butter and that barely helped either. Lastly, I tried a bit of milk and I got a slightly more pourable consistency. I poured about ½ of the mixture on top of the bread and had to dump the rest. This is a picture of my heinous result. Typically, I’m not such a clod in the kitchen, but for some reason, this was not one of my better efforts.

So be it!! Happy Easter, everyone!

Yesterday, I went with my daughter to pick out a Prom gown. We traveled to Frederick to a shop that guaranteed that they would not sell the same gown to anyone who is in the same school as you to hopefully negate the chance of two girls with the same gown.

After picking through their selection of gowns, we took our choices to the dressing room, where there were 5 other moms with their daughters, all doing the same thing. The daughters were wriggling into and out of gowns, shyly peeking from behind the curtains to see if mom could zip them up or get her approval on the way it fit. Some were grumbling because they were still looking for *the* dress and some were almost giddy at playing dress up. The shop owner and her assistants all fluttered around taking away what they called, “no goods” and bringing girls new gowns to try. The Moms were all patiently waiting to be called for help, most of them rolling their eyes and smiling at each other as if we were all part of a club.

Liberty is a curvy 5 foot 2 inches and most gowns will need to visit a seamstress to be hemmed for her, so she’s never really comfortable with the way the dress falls. We had narrowed our choices down to one royal blue strapless gown and one golden gown with rhinestones and ruching. While waiting for the shopkeeper to answer a question about alterations that would be our deciding factor, Libby watched the girl in the dressing room next to us try on just about every gown she had chosen, finally trying to make a choice between an orange beaded gown and the same golden gown we were considering. I couldn’t figure out why my daughter had suddenly become quiet, withdrawn and sullen until she mumbled that she thought the other girl looked better in the golden gown than she did. This girl was at least 5 foot 10, needed no hemming for any gown she put on, was lithe with little curve and you could see my baby comparing herself to this other girl. My comment of, “It doesn’t look better, just different.” didn’t seem to make her feel any better. We ended up with the blue gown, which looks stunning on her, but she later said she chose it because she couldn’t get the vision of the other girl in her gown out of her head!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Frank, Sr. and Frank, Jr. were busy cyber shopping the Sears site for Craftsman tools. Jr. just started a job in which he needs to have his own tools, but wanted Sr. to help him choose what was necessary. After deciding which kit looked to be the best, they ordered the tools and then went to Sears to pick up the order and to also choose a few other needed items. Two hours later, my husband came home with a carrot cake, a thank you gift from my son and his girlfriend. (mmmm carrot cake)

What a lovely way to have spent our Saturday afternoon with our children.

I was recently poking around on the web when I came across a belly dance video clip and felt that old familiar wiggle coming on. I took some dance lessons a few years back and caught on pretty quickly, heck I’d been dancing through my hips most of my life, so it didn’t seem that different to me. However, I was taking the classes with some women in their later 40’s and was amazed at how stiff and tight they were.

Now, I get why. I’ve been sitting too much. I’m stiffer than I ever was, and the old adage, use it or lose it is screaming at me. I have a number of belly dance videos that I need to haul out to go along with my Yoga. It’s not an issue of time or availability, it’s an issue of motivation. I’m a night owl by nature and exercising in the AM just seems to be impossible to get to, but the later the day becomes, the less likely I am to exercise- or dance- because I’m wrapped up in the day to day. Ever since I busted the platter in my kitchen, I haven’t danced much at all and I sure do miss it.

I think tomorrow shall be my dancing day.

I’ve been writing letters to my grand daughters in Mississippi where they are living with their father. Every time I ask them if they got Nini’s letter, they tell me, “no”. Needless to say, I feel a bit put out by this.

I can’t help remembering the day they left to go live with their father. Frank and I had come to see the girls and were planning on taking them to a little festival in the town where my daughter lives. Court was going to be the next day and we had a feeling it wasn’t going to go well for her. On that day, the girls’ father called my daughter and asked if he could see the girls. She told him that Frank and I were there and that we had already made plans. His response was that the girls didn’t need to have a relationship with us anyway so why couldn’t he see them. Believing in the ultimate karmic/christian fundamental thought process of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I told my daughter to tell him he was welcome to accompany us to the festival.

Through accident or no, he spent the majority of that day with the children and in doing so, Frank and I became the outsiders, just trailing along behind with an occasional interaction if we could squeeze one in. The next day the courts ruled in his favor and within 2 hours they were tearfully taken away and put into the car to travel to Mississippi to live with their father- who btw, still lives with his parents and thus they get all the interaction they want with the girls.

Now, I’m sending letters that they say they don’t receive. I know that their grandparents moved to a bigger house now that they have the girls, but I did get the address and have been sending these letters to the proper place. In each letter I ask the girls to send me a little note to let me know they are ok. Willow is old enough to write a simple letter. Now my dilemma is this… do I call them to ‘make sure I have the correct address since the girls say they aren’t getting my letters’ or send my Easter cards by return receipt which only lets me know they were received at the house, but not if the children were given them. I don’t have any problems admitting in a public forum that if I have to pursue Grandparents Rights with the father, I certainly will, but again, I’d rather try the peaceful way and hope that the comment I hear ringing in my ears (“They don’t need a relationship with them”) was perhaps misquoted or some such.

What would you do?

I went to the eye doctor today to have an exam done. I just wanted to make sure all was well since I had clicked the odometer on my body past the 40 mark. The ophthalmologist I went to see was the same one who checked my eyes as a little girl. I was happy to see he was still well and practicing. As you can tell from the photo above, he dilated my eyes for part of the exam. That was at 3:00 pm and here it is 9:00 pm and I have one eye returning to normal and one eye that is still fairly dilated. Needless to say this is making me a bit woozy.

I am going to the beach for my 22nd anniversary. I don’t care if it’s raining, it rained on my wedding day, what can I expect from March? I kind of like the gray days at the beach anyway. Since I am going to the beach for my anniversary, it doesn’t matter to me that there won’t be many people there or things open. I’m simply going to get away from the chores here so I can focus on what is the most important. For 22 years, I have been able to spend time with my best friend and I want to thank him and take time to honor that special day when we decided to link our lives together.

I recently got a Valentine from him- I think one of the best he’s ever given- that reads:

There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends. -Homer

That sums it up pretty well. I think I’m going to get this one framed!

Enjoy your weekend!

When I was sixteen, I must have blacked out for a few months because at seventeen, when I came to, I had a daughter. She and I had a rough 1st year together with little to no support from her father. Everything was a fight with him. I had to fight him to get the 25.00 child support checks (still owes me 5,000.00- 25.00 a week, you do the math), fight him to spend time with his daughter and fight him to act like a real father for his child. I lost just about every battle. When she turned 1 on Thanksgiving day in 1981, he didn’t show up for her birthday party. If I hadn’t stumbled on him at the local 7-Eleven (the only store open on a holiday) when I ran out to get some diapers for her and reminded him that his invitation was still outstanding, I don’t think he would have seen her at all. As it was, he showed up for a grand total of 15 minutes, sat on the couch and barely said a word. She had already been taken out of her cute blue party dress and had enjoyed her messy cake, been bathed and was just about ready for bed by that time. He must have decided that she wasn’t all that interesting, because shortly after her birthday he disappeared from our lives.

On that evening, after putting her to bed and still dealing with the emotional rejection for both she and I, I lay in my bed listening to my CB radio. (Ok, stop laughing now..I loved that thing. It was my portal to the world!) Faintly, because the volume had to be low so I didn’t raise the wrath of my sleeping parents, I heard two male voices talking. They sounded pleasant enough, so I joined in their conversation and changed my life forever. That was the night that I first spoke to my husband, Frank.

Fast forward 6 years. My family now consists of my husband Frank, myself, our daughter and her two brothers. Notice that I said “OUR” daughter. From the moment Frank met Heather, he loved her. He babysat for me while I worked and toted her around on his shoulders while she called him “Bank” and then “Daddy Bank” (fore shadowing there, lol) and then just “Daddy”. That was her progression, no one ever encouraged her to go there. She never knew her brothers as anything other than her brothers. The words half-brother or half-sister have never been a part of our world. I never hid any information about her father from her and answered any question I could when she had one. I never hid from her father, either. She couldn’t understand why Daddy loved her and the boys so much, but her father never saw her. Then one day, he reappeared. Not for long, though, just enough time for her to get ecstatic about the attention. She was only 7 when he disappeared on her again.

And so the pattern repeated itself when she was about 10 and again at 12. Then her great uncle died. The only member of her father’s family who EVER treated that child like she was a member of the family. He was a decent man, so we went to his funeral. She was freshly 16 when she saw her father again. She was hurt and angry and she let him know it. She made sure he was aware that she had just had her 16th birthday and that there had been no phone call, no birthday greeting card, no anything. He looked at me and told me I had done a good job. (Well, duh!! It’s not like he did anything!) After that day, he called her a little more frequently for about a year and then reverted to same same and vanished again.

When she was 17 she decided that life with mom and rules were just too hard, so she found herself living in the South with her estranged father. At the time she thought anything was better than having a curfew and following the house rules… she was almost an adult for heavens sake!! Three moves (read evictions) and a couple of visits from the police looking for her father (who had somehow just “stepped out”) had her begging to come home a year later, promising to follow any rule.

She never used her legal name, but instead went by our surname. She referred to Frank as her father and called him Daddy and began to refer to her biological father as just that.. or she called him her sperm donor. She was still hurt and angry. When she got married, Frank gave his daughter away. (Although with the current circumstances, I wish he had tucked her under his arm like a football just as he had done while rough housing through the years and had run for the door!!)

Two children and a failed marriage later, she packed up her things and moved South again. Her father was now married, and caring for his new wife’s’ children. She had never liked the cold, had a job offer in the same town he lived in and was still hurt and angry and so she left. She calls him Don. He has been kind to the grandchildren, but never can see his way to follow through with the things he promises either to her or them. He has babysat them a few times and his wife dotes on them. She has had far more contact and interaction with our daughter than he has and has expressed love for her.

Throughout our daughters life, Frank has been her rock. He has jumped to action whenever needed. He would, and has, done anything he could to help his children, and they all know it.

So, tonight, when I got a phone call from my upset child, telling me that Don’s wife was berating her yet again for not calling him Dad, I resisted the urge to pick up my phone and call her to let her know just what I thought of that idea and a few other choice thoughts as well concerning my opinion on fatherhood and the right to be called DAD. Because as far as most anybody who reads this will agree, just about any man can donate a sperm and father a child, but you have to earn the right to be called Daddy through love and care, consistency and undying support. NO MATTER WHAT.

I’ve spent the day painting a room in the basement. I’ve been trying to get this room painted for over a month, but I needed someone to finish their part before I could do the rest of it. I’m not naming any names, but suffice it to say that I have a large difficulty doing the part I asked them to do and really needed the help.

After patiently asking for them to do their thing, I finally hit SSP. Most people know what this means if you know me, but for you newbies it is my sh*t saturation point. It’s the point where my patience ends and I decide you are no longer needed. I will do what I need to even if it lands me in the hospital trying to do it, or the point where I decide I’ll just pay someone else to do it, or the point where a child of mine has pushed past the limit and find themselves on the wrong side of Mom. It’s just that point you get to when you have had enough. It takes awhile for me to reach, but it’s not a pretty sight.

I don’t know about anyone else, but if you can imagine a mercury based thermometer that has had heat applied to the base, you’ll see the mercury rising. If you remove the heat for a short time, the mercury begins to fall, but not very quickly and if you reapply the heat, you reach the top fairly fast again. That’s how my SSP works. And since it can be combined with a wicked temper and a look that could level a small village, I don’t like to even come close to the boiling point.

I’ve taken many steps to mitigate the possibilities of ever reaching the SSP, but sometimes it’s just not enough, and usually the people or situation that has pushed me to that point are quite valid. This doesn’t occur just because I’m a little peeved about something, or slightly annoyed or even kind of angry. This is a slow building event where my tolerance is tested over and over again and very frequently has involved many warnings and discussions and compromises and long periods of patience.

I hate reaching SSP, but sometimes it seems as though nothing changes until I do. Like I’m not taken seriously until I pop! For those of you who think that I should openly discuss what is bothering me with the person pushing the limits, let me assure you that I do. For those of you who may be quick to deny this, just sit and think for a minute before you respond. I’ll give you credit if you can think of a time that we didn’t talk about an issue, over and over again, before I finally had had enough.

Ah well, I’m not perfect either.