The Big 5-0 and how I messed up

Shoot! My husband is turning 50 in 5 days… and I totally did not realize it was nearly June. To be fair – to me – I’ve had a lot on my mind. A dear friend is going through a nasty divorce, and had 10 days to move herself and two girls out of their lovely home into a one bedroom apartment. I can’t say how I feel about the whole situation because curse words would be involved… I will get into that another day! However, because of this I have been coordinating work days at her home to schedule people to pack and get people and vehicles to do the actual moving this weekend… as well as trying to help my poor friend not to have a complete breakdown. I’ve spent more time texting the last few days than I have in all the time I’ve actually had the ability to text… it’s been crazy. Not to mention working extra hours because this week was our big semi-annual sale, and it’s Kiki’s last week of school so we’ve been doing study guides and extra credit to pull her grades up (she has some B’s and would prefer to finish with A’s) and studying for finals… Also, she is working towards a mission trip to a foreign county in July, and her 16th birthday is this summer and I’ve been working on preparations for that for months (she wants a big to-do, so to pull that off I’ve had to take care of things in small $ amounts over several months). So in the midst of all that, I kind of forgot my husband’s big day.

Until today, when my mom asked when we were doing “the birthdays”. It’s always been sort of a 1-2 punch, as my dad’s birthday is one day after my husband’s, so we usually celebrate them together, with a family get-together of some sort. Which is fine, they both like that… but this year, since it was his 50th, I wanted to do something… special. Not huge, but special. And I spaced. And I’m not sure what to do about it at this point.

On the flip side, my daughter’s birthday is going to be fabulous!! Oops.

Is it really February already??

Wow. I have a lot to say, but tonight I am too tired to say it. But wanted to let you all know I am still alive here.

Flu shots, football, and other foolishness

I don’t get football. I see no reason to watch it. A bunch of grown men running around playing a game that, sure, might be fun for them; but why do I want to watch it? Why would I care? How would it affect my own life? Just. Don’t. Care. My mom and my husband watch it. Whatever. I get sort of a kick out of watching my mom watch it. 🙂

Then there are those flu shots. Flu shots are stupid. Yeah, I said it. I don’t know if Hugh Jackman meant what he said or was kidding but I don’t care. (I mean, he’s adorable, so I don’t care!! Lol. I love the fact he’s married to a gal way older than him who is also kinda wrinkly, and chubby… and he seems to adore her. Yay him!!) But back to the flu shot…. I am not against all vaccinations. We have made some big strides in eradicating some nasty diseases.  However, I think we need to be careful, for one thing – not all vaccines are for all people.

But this stupid flu shot!! They “guess” which flu might be coming for the season and those are the ones they vaccinate against… but there are literally thousands of flu strains, and quite often they get it wrong. Nobody in my house got the flu shot. 3 out of 5 of us got the flu. Sound bad? Yeah. But 2 of those had one sort of flu and 1 had another. And I was stuck with all of them, and I didn’t get it at all.  Just in my mom’s circle of friends, 3 people she knows who got the flu shot got the flu.  So that was a biiiig help. The doctor even admitted to one of these people that they chose the wrong flu to vaccinate against.  Yeah. You’ve heard of “practicing medicine”, right?? Yeah. A “Doctor’s Practice“? Ummhmmm.

Here is my theory – the Big Pharmaceuticals are also the Board of Directors at all the med schools. They hire all the teachers. They teach “what medicine to prescribe” rather than “how to uncover what’s really wrong and how to treat for it”. Do I sound like a conspiracy theorist? Maybe.

Other foolishness? Just… my life. I am so tired of being – sad. So. Tired. And I see absolutely no end to it. The stuff that bothers me? It will never be any different. I mean, not the big stuff. Some things may get better, sure. But the core issues? I don’t think anything can be done.

So sad.

 

Stuff that just ain’t right

Finding items from your own childhood – in an antique store.

This calls for mexican hot chocolate ~ with marshmallows ~ (laced with alcohol!)

I had a super busy morning at work, where not only were we having a big sale but my boss – once again – came up with a 5 minute spiel she wanted me to go through each time I rung up a customer (Really? I have a giant line-up and you wish me to detain each and every customer?? That wouldn’t annoy them…!) But that’s not the real issue… the thing is, it’s 14 degrees out, and I can’t seem to get warm, even though I’ve been sitting in the house for over 2 hours now! Alan agreed that it’s too cold, but he denied my request to go out for Chai Lattes… said he’d have to get even colder to get there, so that wouldn’t help…lol. I said I could make coffee or some tea – he said “how about hot chocolate?” Then I got to thinking… I have a bottle of Carolans Honey Irish Cream in the fridge!

Now, I am not a big drinker. Shoot, I am not much of a drinker of any sort! Maybe an ice cold beer in summer when it’s blazing hot and I just mowed the lawn. Once every couple years, if we go out somewhere nice on our anniversary, I will splurge in an Amaretto Sour. oooooohhhh… but I digress… the point is, it sounded yummy, and it sounded warm.

Milk, mexican chocolate, Irish Cream, marshmallows…. I am positively glowing with warmth!! 

A New Year, a change in the weather ~ yikes it’s cold!

Yeah, Yeah, I know. It’s winter. I live in Idaho. But seriously… this is ridiculous. Let’s see, right now it is… 7 degrees. They are forecasting that the temperature in the morning will be minus 4 or thereabouts. brrrrrrrr!! It used to be this cold, the first time we lived here. It just seems like it hasn’t been like this the last several years. But now? Global warming my eye. 

It’s so cold I couldn’t bear to make the outdoor cat sleep … well, outdoors. He has a bed – well, a blanket in a box in the shed – but it’s so cold! Poor kitty. So I made him a spot out in my dad’s garage, and dad didn’t argue. He says cats are spawn of the devil, but he has a soft spot in his heart for all animals, regardless. 🙂  It’s nearly 60 in the garage, so I think that’s a big step up.

It makes it rather hard to follow through – oh, shoot, to even begin! – that wonderful ‘resolution’ of getting out and walking every day! Yeah, I don’t think so!

Just as I’ve been typing this (altho I admit, I am also watching a movie, so it’s taken longer than you’d think) it has dropped to 5.5 degrees…

Thank the Lord for warm homes, fireplaces, snuggly beds and hot tea.

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Craft ~ Big Felt Robot

This hasn’t neccessarily been my year for crafting. I got really upset last summer – two summers ago, actually – when the medication my doctor prescribed for my pnuemonia wreaked havoc on my system, including the loss of the use of my right thumb. Everything I tried doing – crafty or otherwise – was incredibly hard and discouraging. I set aside several projects I’d been working on and have yet to restart them.

It’s been a long year and a half but I have regained most of the strength in my arms and my thumb is usable, although it doesn’t quite have the dexterity it once did. I have hope that it may come back completely, but it’s been a process for sure.

Anyway, this year I did decide to try a couple craft projects as gifts. I painted a couple things, one of which I have yet to finish (yeah, yeah, I know – Christmas was a week ago!) I sort of ran out of time. Our entire household has been battling the flu, and as “last one standing” I had way too much on my plate.

This particular project, the stuffed robot, I made for my youngest niece. Still, she’s 13, so I wasn’t sure if she’d love it or wonder “What the heck is my Auntie thinking?!” It was, of course, much more difficult and time consuming that I’d planned; I was actually going to use a blanket stitch around each of the cubes, but ended up only doing his head and sewing the rest of the cubes on the machine …  and I was thinking that if my niece didn’t love it he was going to be a huge waste of time! I am glad to report that she LOVED him!! I haven’t seen her that excited in awhile 🙂 I also had sprayed my perfume on the stuffing (she always tells me she loves how I smell, lol) and she just hugged him and sniffed him for ages. It was so worth the effort!

Did you have a Merry Christmas?

I can’t believe it’s over. It’s like you wait forever – like, an entire year!!  😉 – for Christmas to come, then zoooom… it has come and gone just that quick.

This year was worse than most, because the flu hit my family with a vengence this year. Kiki and both my parents were sick for a full week leading up to Christmas, so not only did we not get to do most of the “getting in the Holiday Spirit” things we do each year, but since I was the only one well I had to do all the cooking and cleaning and what-not, so it was just not my favorite time. Also I think I was fighting the flu myself, so I spent alot of time feeling woozy and nauseated, albeit never actually sick. Alan came down with the flu on Christmas Eve, so he was pretty out of it today as well.

I also didn’t bake hardly anthing this year. I always make frosted sugar cookies, fudge, coconut balls, pecan tarts, and a few other things. This year between feeling rather icky and being overwhelmed with chores and nursing the sick I just had no desire to bake… maybe because I had no real desire to eat, either. But I wish I had some now!

On top of all that, my sister’s side of the family decided they didn’t want to risk getting sick so they opted out of coming over for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner because our house was “too germy”.  I am almost wicked enough to hope they all get the flu anyway – almost, but not quite. It’s a pretty nasty flu.

All that being said, I still had a good Christmas. I love Christmas. I go completely overboard trying to make it an awesome time for my daughter, and once again I did not fail in that! She was thrilled with every gift she got, even tho I found a good bit of it on Craigslist and at the local thrift stores. I did great at thrift shopping this year! I don’t normally do that, but since we are sooo very broke, it seemed like a good idea – and it worked out well.

Of course we try to focus on the true meaning of Christmas – the birth of Christ. I feel like I was a little slack on that this year…

I am sure I try a little too hard to get all the “right” gifts for my daughter, which I am sure goes back to my own childhood (and, well, into my adulthood) in which my parents never really got me what I asked for. I mean, they asked us to make a “wish list”, and then never got me any of the things on it. Don’t get me wrong – I have good parents, and they meant well.  I can totally understand why I never got a horse, even tho it was the #1 thing on my list for – well, forever. We didn’t have a place for a horse, I get that. What was hard is that no matter what I wanted, what I got was… tweaked. Like, say I asked for a Veterinarian Barbie… I would get something close, but not that. And the thing is, it wouldn’t even be super-close. Like I wouldn’t even get “Doctor Barbie” which at least is practically the same thing… I would get some other sort of  doll. It was always because there was some sort of logical reason why they item they bought me was “better”. Maybe it was cheaper, maybe it had did more stuff or came with more accessories or whatever… so I mean, they thought it was a good thing they were doing. But, it wasn’t. I wanted, well, what I wanted. I had some reason why it was the item I wanted, but it didn’t matter I guess.

Which is why I have this… obsession… to get my daughter exactly what she wants for Christmas. I don’t mean she gets every item on her list (I’d have to be a millionaire!) or that she even gets everything that my limited budget would consider a lot spent – I just mean, if I get her something on her list, I get her as close to exactly what she wants as I can. Like, when she was little and asked for a particular American Girl doll, she got that exact doll. Not a different American Girl doll that was on sale that holiday, and certainly not some other doll that was close but… not.  This year I spent hours looking for the exact scarf she had described to me. So, yeah, it’s nuts… but she’s never been disappointed in her Christmas. For good or bad. This year was no exception even though I had very limited funds to draw from. I was creative, so it all worked out!

It was also nice because I myself had nothing in particular I wanted. All I really, really want is a home of my own, and since no one can afford to buy me that, I didn’t anything special, so everything I got was just great!

But now it’s over. And it seems like it came and went far too fast. Tonight my niece asked Kiki to spend the night and she just called to say goodnight, and she’s having a great time. I love that she gets along so well with her cousin, and love that she’s enjoying her time. But I am feeling kind of sad and lonely, and wish she was home with me. I guess we can have fun together even if it’s not Christmas, right? But, I am totally feeling that “after-the-holiday-letdown”; you know what I mean? Plus, tomorrow is back to work for me, so it’s back to the regular old grind and I really wish I had some time off to just enjoy my family, especially since Kiki is on break from school.

Well, I hope you and yours had an amazing Christmas!!

“At least it’s a ‘dry heat'”

Today’s official high temperature – well in the United States, anyway – was 108 degrees, in Boise, Idaho. Yeah… right where I live.  Well, okay, technically, I live in one of the outlying towns… but, still. It was toastin’ hot here today.

The weird thing is, it didn’t seem horribly hot to me. Hot, yeah, of course, but not like ‘walking into a furnace’ hot, and you’d think it would have felt like that.

I think there is something strange going on… with me. See, I was born and raised in the West – Southern California. Then since getting married, we have also lived in some other western states – Idaho, Utah, Washington… and then Virginia. The West can be hot… obviously. But it’s dry. Well, okay, the Seattle area isn’t exactly what you’d call dry, but what I mean to say is, it’s not humid. Not in the least. Most of my life, when I’d complain about the weather and how hot it was, someone would say “well, at least it’s a dry heat” and I’d think “what the crap does that mean?” because let’s face it, hot is hot, right? Well, no. Wrong.

We lived in Virginia about a year and a half, over two summers. Geez, you talk about HOT!!  And guess what? It’s not the temperature that kills you, it’s the humidity. I don’t understand why anyone would live back east on purpose. Humidity is just… gross. It’s like I couldn’t even breathe back there when it was hot… like I was wrapped up in a hot, wet, woolen blanket.  urrgggh. 

So we’re back in Idaho, and even though it’s been over 100 degrees every day this week, and just plain crazy hot today… it felt…. good. A nice hot. Just a “dry heat”, lol. I guess you have to experience the “wet heat” to understand what that means.

Going to the Ball! You know, like Cinderella.

Tomorrow night I am going to The Ball. You’d think I’d be more excited.  Maybe it’s because I’m no longer a teenager, or that, being married, I can’t really expect to meet Prince Charming.  ‘Cause, that’d be awkward and all.

Actually, my daughter has been taking a Cotillion class and this Ball is the final event. Dinner and dancing.  Kiki gets to wear a lovely formal gown, new shoes, sparkly jewelry, and beforehand we are going to my sister’s house and she’s going to give her some sort of fancy up-do.  Me, I’m just wearing the one dress I own and a worn out pair of flats. Sigh. One of the crappy parts of being poor… and yet, it doesn’t really matter. Kiki is the one who ought to feel like a princess.  And hopefully she will.