A break

Have taken a break from writing for a little while. Dad passed away and I am sad, and overwhelmed at what needs to be done. Will resume when I'm not feeling so raw; hopefully that will come soon.

Not-so-random thoughts

1. I love my dad.

2. I hate cancer.

3. Why is it okay, humane even, to put a dog out of its suffering, but Assisted Suicide is only legal in 2 states?

mini-vaca

Velo-dude, Pinky, Curly & I went to the beautiful resort destination of the Quad Cities (southern IA-IL border) for Memorial Day. Big series of bike races, a pretty fun event that we used to hit just about every year. (before kids, that is)

Plan was to leave Friday evening right after work. Well, Friday morning I took a short but violent spill on the stairs at my house, full cup of coffee in hand, and hit the back of my head hard on the stairs. Pretty sure I had a minor concussion, finally felt mostly back to normal on Sunday.

Saturday in Burlington IA, the Snake Alley criterium, my favorite to watch. Velo-dude had a pretty good day, although he wasn't entirely satisfied with it. Spent some time with my boys down by the Mississippi River in the afternoon, here's a pic of them with my favorite Mississippi bridge behind them (truth be told, I haven't seen that many of them, but I still think this would be one of my favorites if I had). Curly is soaking wet due to a romp in the fountain that didn't make it into the picture.

Sunday race was at a truly beautiful park in Muscatine IA. Got to spend some good outdoor time with the boys, if only the city pool in the middle of the park hadn't been tempting us on the hot sunny day, only to be closed. Velo-dude had a migraine, but managed to finish his race, a small victory of sorts. Decided to take a break from fast food on Sunday night, so we sat ourselves down to a decent meal at a well-known chain I'll call...BananaBees. Velo-dude had been eyeing a table tent with a picture of a "mile high pie" on it, and we decided without much thought to order one for the table, with 4 forks. Velo-dude, Pinky, and Curly all dug in, and then I took a bite and immediately froze, recognizing the taste of peanut butter in my mouth. Stopped Curly, who suffers from a significant peanut allergy, from taking any more, and immediately confirmed with server that yes, it contained peanut butter, then talked Curly through it, making sure he was not feeling any danger signs. His eyes were as wide as can be, the poor little guy was FREAKED, as well he should have been. We completely lucked out...the pie truly was a mile high, and his fork never made it to the lower levels where the pb was found. Once we were certain he was not having a reaction, we ordered him a pb-free dessert of his own, and he calmed down. I am still appalled with myself for not having checked first. It is SO rare for us to go out to a sit-down meal, and rarer yet for us to order a dessert. But I am confident that this will put me back on my toes. Was also appalled to note that the epi-pen I had so carefully packed was back in the hotel room, not in my purse, at the time. It must suck to be my kid.

Monday's race venue was not great for the boys. Would have enjoyed watching more racing myself, but we ended up putting up some chairs and reading (or video-gaming if you're Curly) for a few hours. Drove home through lots of rain, got home around 10 pm, not too bad. I'm glad we went, but probably won't do that again for a while. Velo-dude would have more fun with his racer friends anyway, I tell myself.

Reading...I am getting into the habit of reading some of the same things Pinky is reading. It started with the Lightning Thief series earlier this spring, and I actually got into them, I always did have a thing for Greek mythology. But this weekend I couldn't find the book I had started, so I picked up another book Pinky had, and I must say it sucked. "Found". Terrible ending, only sucks you into the next in the series, really cheesy plot at the end, ugh. I read the whole thing Monday at the race and in the car. At least it's a quick read. I have the 4th in the mythology series waiting for me upstairs though, think I'd better go do that before I start studying in earnest again. Also started My Sister's Keeper, but I may have to put that one on hold for a while. I wish I could read guilt-free, instead of feeling like I should be studying all the time.

Way better than raindrops on roses...

THESE are a few of my favorite things...and oddly enough, even the clipboard that snuck into the picture is one of my favorite things...I love the two-toned wood. So, the reason for the pic is that after a too-eventful day, a cosmo was in order. Why was it too eventful, you ask? For starters, took a professional exam thingy this morning (4 hours of the morning, anyway), and it did not go well. I knew I was not well-prepared going in, since I had started serious studying way too late in the game, but I was frustrated at how poorly things went even on the topics I thought I did know well. Checked a discussion board tonight and found I was not alone...even the well-prepared peeps were extremely unhappy about the exam. Even though the bar has apparently been lowered, I am certain I'll be back at it in 6 months. Ugh. But, at least I feel like I know where to go when I start back up, so hopefully I'll get 'er next time.

I got to take the rest of the day off (the company knows you'll be worthless if you go back to work after that), so the afternoon actually was uneventful. Did a little shopping and a half-hearted attempt at picking up the house (not cleaning mind you, just picking up). When velo-dude got home we decided he should mow the lawn while Curly and I went to pick up some dinner, and that's when the excitement really picked up. We got the food, and were almost home (within feet of the house) when I stopped at a stop sign, waiting to turn left and another quick left into my driveway. As I waited, I saw the car facing me pull out into the intersection, and right into the path of a large pickup truck. I wanted to tell him to stop, but I couldn't figure out how, so I just had to watch the whole thing in slow-mo, as the truck t-boned him HARD on the passenger side and his car spinned a bit and slid sideways, closer and closer to me, thankfully stopping about 2 feet from my front end. Yikes. Since we were essentially in front of our house, Velo-dude and Pinky came running out after hearing the big crunch sound, as did a whole lot of our neighbors. The ensuing helping out of those involved, submitting statements, chatting with the neighbors we never see, and the boys wanting to watch till both cars got towed away, lasted over an hour. Luckily it was the ONE night of the week when we had no activities or other commitments. Scary stuff. The passenger was the only one hurt, but I think it was not too serious, a hit to the head which is hopefully not a big one, and banged up a bit. The driver at fault was a high school kid, and I wanted to hug him, he was so shaken up. When his dad finally got there he was all matter of fact and let's get this business taken care of , and I felt like screaming "for the love of Pete, just give your kid a hug!" He finally did get hugs from the mom of the kid that got hurt, once she was done in the ambulance with hers.

So, now that the intense studying is over (for a while), I'm going to try to get back into writing every once in a while. I've had plenty of stories to tell, but I've been hesitant to write about my trivialities when I've got good friends dealing with some really serious shit right now. But I know that's not right, and I also know that if I were dealing with things half as serious as they are right now, I'd probably want some diversions. So, divert I will, when I can carve out the time.

And now, I think I hear the second half of that beautiful steel shaker calling my name.

The domestic goddess is...

velo-dude. Last month it was the dinosaur cookies for Curly's birthday. This month it's the spaceship cake for the Cub Scout cake decorating contest. The boys designed it and decorated it once it was frosted, but hats off to velo-dude for taking the design and cutting the cake out in the perfect shape, and then frosting cut cake without making a huge crumby mess of it (which I would most certainly have done). Velo-dude has a much better story to tell of said cake making activity (if you don't care to hear about a bicycle training race, scroll down through the first part of this entry).

So, speaking of linking to the hubby's site, I have pretty much abandoned hope of anonymity with this blog, even though I'll continue to go through the motions. Velo-dude doesn't see any need for anonymity, and has mentioned me by name in his blog. I've told him not to do that, so he no longer does, but then he posts a picture with me in it. (head hits wall) Oh, but he did make the effort to start referring to me as something other than my real name. And the term of endearment he chose? "The wifely one". Huh? I can't put my finger on it, but I don't like it. Maybe it sounds matronly to me.

Finally, here's the only good thing about having a fever earlier this week (well, other than missing a day of work, but since I spent it in bed, it wasn't all that great). One of my many fever-induced dreams involved me shooting a movie with Sean Connery. I was just my plain old self, but had happened to land a gig as his co-star in an action flick (ok peeps, quit yer laffin now!). What I remember of the dream was very brief, but I had the fever in my dream, while shooting the movie as well, and at one point he had to grab me in a scene, and do you know what he said? (think of your best Sean Connery impression here...) "You're hot". And he was referring to my fever. Of course. Although it took me a moment to figure that out. I woke up right after that happened, and as crappy as I felt, I smiled at the cornball humor of my dream.

FB, I guess I do like you

Yes, that's Facebook I'm talking to. In the past week I have reconnected with a cousin that I have not kept in touch with for years, ditto for a fave friend from high school, and then today I got something from a childhood friend I knew while living across the country, and haven't kept in touch with for ages!

Yes, there are people that contact me that I really don't have much to say to, but some of these unexpected little gems are really nice!

Pinky Drops the F-bomb

Yes, that’s right, my nine year old. Not feeling like a great parent right now. Here’s the story (warning--long post ahead--I was never very good at editing)

Yesterday, I picked up the boys from After School Care, and Pinky hesitantly said it was not a good day for him. He sounded frustrated, some run-in with a 3rd grader in after care. He didn’t really want to get into it, but the teachers didn’t know about it so I dropped it for later. He has a project he is working on at home right now, a “book publishing”. They worked on writing a book about themselves at school, typing in the text on the computer, then the artwork for each page is to be done at home. Then it gets sent to a company that “publishes” it, so it looks like a real book. Cool idea. We are a little behind, it’s due Thursday so after dinner I was pushing him to get a few pictures done. He messed up a letter on the cover page, in crayon, and it’s special paper of which he does not have extra, so this was frustrating for him. I tried to help give him ideas for fixing it, but he started to shut down on me. Velo-dude, the more artistic of the two of us, stepped in with some suggestions, but he got even more frustrated. I told him to go up to his room and calm down (I didn’t want him doing permanent damage to the cover page with a temper tantrum) before working on it again. Meanwhile, I noticed that my iPod was on, and was playing a Reel Big Fish song that was repeating the phrase “I don’t f*cking care, I don’t f*ucking care, I don’t f*ucking care, I don’t f*cking care”. I wanted to run over and shut it off, but I chose instead to try to address Pinky and his problem. Velo-dude was in the kitchen as well, and as I sent Pinky upstairs he ran in and changed the song (Bad Parenting Exhibit 1--I have a few third wave ska bands on my iPod, it’s a sound I’ve always liked, and Reel Big Fish even has a parental warning, but I usually don’t play it for the family. But, I kind of forgot about that particular song). Anyway, Pinky came down a few minutes later and apologized to velo-dude for getting frustrated when he was trying to help. Velo-dude resumed help-mode but Pinky immediately got frustrated all over again. Velo-dude said “fine, I’m done” and walked away (I had already done pretty much the same thing, the first time around). Pinky was getting all worked up again, so I again told him he needed to go to his room to cool down. He blew a gasket, left the dining room and out of my eyesight, then reappeared on his way upstairs, stomping, red in the face, hands pulling on his hair, and yelled at the top of his lungs “I AM SO F*CKING FRUSTRATED!!!!”, stomped up the stairs and slammed the door. Velo-dude and I looked at each other with mouths dropped, then did what any sane, rational, and responsible parent would do…laugh. Quietly, of course, so he wouldn’t hear, but laughed pretty hard (that was Bad Parenting Exhibit 2). Don’t get me wrong, I do NOT think a 4th grader using the f-bomb is good stuff, but part of it was shock, part of it knowing that I was at fault for letting the song play, part of it thinking about how good/bad that must have made him feel to be so daring to say that. This kid is a pleaser, and NEVER gets in trouble at school. Very uncharacteristic of him. In fact, I have another song on my iPod that repeats the phrase “g*d d*mn”, and if it accidentally comes on in a shuffle, Pinky will come running from any room in the house, change the song, and say “that was the bad word song, Mom” (was that Bad Parenting Exhibit 3, or can I include that with Exhibit 1?).

Back to the action…I went up and talked to him after a cool-down period. He finally said that he was very worried about the Kansas Assessment Test the next day at school. His teacher had made a very big deal about it, told the kids how important it was to the district that they do their best, etc. Stupid flippin’ standardized tests! I hate them, and the fact that school district funding is tied to them! I know, I understand the pros and cons, at least to a point, but I don’t like it and I never have. And I realize that the state of Kansas is in a major budget crisis, so this year feels even more important. But give me a break, they are 4th graders! I really like his teacher this year, but, to quote a fine young man I know, “I am so f*cking frustrated” with her right now for laying this on so thick.

In the end, Pinky did not get a punishment. But he does realize that if I hear that word come out of his mouth again, there will be punishment, and it will be severe. No punishment because I don’t think it will happen again any time soon. How often does the Perfect Storm brew? This was it… the Assessment Test stress, the finality of messing up on the cover of your first published book, and the f*cking song burning in your ears during all of that stress. I feel bad for the kid. I know it’s possible that he will become a habitual 4th-grade-f-bomb-dropper and I will have to eat my words, but I really don’t think so.

Oh and by the way, once the storm blew over, we were able to salvage the cover of his book and it’s going to look just fine.

P.S. Do you remember the first time you cursed, and meant it? I think I was in the 4th grade also. Very dissatisfying it was, all I could manage to blurt out was "b*tch", and that was to a boy who had knocked me down on the playground. What can I say, I choked, but I've improved over the years. First time I cursed in front of a parent? Quite honestly, I think it was less than a year ago, it slipped out, and my dad was so surprised, HE laughed. Yep, I was the pleaser in my family.