Guest Who Don't Show

Aaaahhhh...I love reading old blogs. I had totally forgotten about this one. This is from back around Christmas time of '05. I know, I know...ancient days ago, but this is priceless. Ryan is still irked at people that don't keep their word.

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So, my 4 year old goes to a private preschool/daycare place. They aren't religiously affiliated in anyway but they are old school and don't worry to much about being PC. This winter they put on a Christmas pageant and 2 days ago the kids had a Christmas party at school where they were able to bring treats and stuff. Today was the Happy Birthday Jesus party for the kids put on by the teachers.

Yesterday Ryan tells me he's really looking forward to going to school today because they're having the Happy Birthday Jesus party and "I've never met him before so I really want to see him!" Priceless. I told him I wasn't sure if Jesus would actually be able to BE at the party since he was born sooooo long ago. "Mom," he says, as if I'm completely retarded, "that's just a story."

So, he goes to school today and I pick him up at noon and ask how the party went. He is completely pissed when I mention it and indignintly states, "He wasn't even there!" I'm with him...I hate it when invited guests don't show; so rude.

Must Be Doing Something Right

Today is my 10th anniversary. This morning my 7 year old brought my husband and I a card that he insisted I buy 2 weeks ago but was not allowed to see. He had taken the card to his brothers and had them each sign the card, too. It was truly precious as none of our kids have ever "done" anything for us for our anniversary in the past.

So, my oldest son (15) writes in the card, "You two have taken good care of us. You two have gone through the good, the bad and and ugly for us. Yet, we still don't see any of it and don't care." What a gift! He knows that we really have gone through some ugly situations in the past but we've always made our family the first priority. He also knows that during the good times, the family is the first to sop up the outpouring of generosities.

I looked at my husband and told him that we must be accomplishing what we set out to do with this family of ours. To insulate them from what they should never have to worry themselves about as children and to nurture them into the fine young thoughtful men that they are. That's about the most perfect gift we could ever ask for.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

Here's a blog from back in '05...the beginning of the MySpace blog migration I promised. Short but sweet and definitely something that is timeless in its lesson. And, while I'm currently in one of those "not getting what I want" phases in life, despite the crap that is swirling around me in my toilet bowl of life (sorry, that's not a very nice mental picture now that I think about it), it's probably just what I need. Alright, now the mental picture just became worse and I'm even icked out. Apologies.
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So, I'm at one of my rentals yesterday doing some work (and it needs lots of it) and I'm listening to the radio as I sit in the stairway and paint. On comes The Stones. I confess I've never been much of a Stones fan so I've never really paid much attention to their lyrics or anything. But, sitting in the stairway painting - a task that appears not to have been done in somewhere around 15 years - I took a real listen.

What I came away with was...you can't always get what you want, but if you try real hard, you might just get what you need...or something relatively close to that. Hmm...profound. So many times I haven't gotten what I wanted; however, I've generally ended up with something that I looked back and said, "Ah, I get it now...what I got was actually what I needed as a human being at the time." Important lesson.

Case in point, I have 3 boys. What on earth I would ever do with icky ol' boys I wasn't sure. I desperately wanted a girl; sobbed each time I learned I was having a boy. Looking back, though, I find that I have no idea what I would have done with one if I had gotten one. I like girly things but I have no patience for the prissy, girly, I-have-to-have-these-shoes-to-go-with-this-purse-and-I-need-this-hair-thing-to-match-and.... business. I'm better with dirt and bugs and blue jeans and boots. Better yet, I realized that I retained the status of being the only female in the house; a position that relish.

No, you can't always get what you want. But, if you try real hard, you just might get what you need.

After saying to myself for several months that I was going to start a blog here, I finally have. Have been blogging at MySpace for quite some time but there are plenty of people out there that are connected to me that DON'T have a MySpace and this just seems like an easier place for them to find my blogs. I'll start transferring over some of the older blogs I have there to here in the next few weeks but until then there will just be my general ramblings here.

Currently, my life feels like it's in upheaval. I just realized how much the word upheaval makes me think of throwing up and, now that I think of it, that's kind of what life has felt like for about the last month. Just a bunch of life vomit. Not that it's all been bad but it certainly could be better. You know how when you're puking your guts out and there's someone there to hold your hair? Well, it's good that you've got someone holding your hair but, in general, you wish you could be somewhere else.

So, yeah, the vomit part is that my own computer has been dead for just over a month. I'm using my husband's computer in the meantime - as are he and the 3 children - and it's just a real pain in the butt. Makes it hard to run an internet business when the only computer at your disposal is often at someone else's office all day and then you have to fight the offspring for the use of it once it does make an appearance. It's completely thrown me out of my regular routine, too, so that, in turn, has thrown everything else out of whack. Plus, the kids are home all day since it's summer. I just can't get into the swing of things yet and I've been dealing with this for the last 5 weeks! I'm sure it will all fall into place the day before school starts.

On the "holding my hair" side of things, we got to go visit family over 4th of July and we all went camping. That was uber cool as the boys had never really done "real" camping. Hahahaha...I say "real" like we were out in the middle of nowhere with a flint and a roll of duct tape. We were at a campground with real toilets and all but we were in tents and sleeping on the ground and cooking on campstoves and stuff. Anyway, we were at a lake and did wakeboarding and riding waverunners and stuff and that was completely cool. One more thing to check off my list of things I can do...drive a waverunner. Woohoo! We've also had some around home kind of fun this year like trips to the library, picking fresh raspberries, planting a garden and stuff like that.


So, the summer hasn't been a total loss and, frankly, maybe the computer crashed as a way of telling me that I needed to focus on other things for awhile, which is OK. The computer is supposed to be back on Sunday, though. Then I'll get to focus on how to pay for the repair!