Old Times

AOL is showing a concert video of Neil Diamond and also one of Rod Stewart . Apparently they're both touring or something(?)

Neil Diamond.... I haven't heard his music in many years. The concert was slightly hokey, it was kinda silly seeing Neil 'rocking'. And Rod... what can I say about Rod Stewart. I always went to see his concerts. He always had a 50 piece orchestra performing with him. I loved it.

The first concert I ever saw was Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I can hear you guys saying who?! I was 15 and the 'boy' was 18.... with hair down to his shoulders and driving a little green Triumph convertible. The concert was downtown and I wore a purple cape. Yep... a purple cape.

My father waited up for me to come home.. I'm surprised he let me out of the house to begin with... lol

anyway....Neil and Rod.... how fun to listen to them tonight. I sat here remembering and singing along... All the time smiling like a fool....

yep. .........smiling like an old fool.

Jagged Little Pills

Progress reports from school were sent out yesterday. Oddly enough this parent didn't see one.

Gee... Do I even wonder why?

After 13 years of being a parent to a child (or 3 of them) in school, I don't even have to guess if it was an honest mistake on his part and that he really 'forgot' it.

I know better.

So welcome to hell week at the "K/M" house. Or Four hell weeks to be exact. 'Cause 4 weeks is as long as it is until school is out.

In the meantime, his Jeep is now parked and his brother (who quit his job last week) will drive him to school and back until either a) his grades improve; or b) school ends.....

and the latest speeding ticket? ..... $250. oh yea.. it's not been pretty.

Spontaneous and Alive.

".............Meet me tonight and let's go dancing...." he wrote.

That was in an e-mail I received last week. From someone I have never met, or talked to, or written to before.

I politey responded, "No thank you."

To which I received this reply......................

"You're not spontaneous. I am looking for a woman that is. You're probably boring in bed too."

.........Ummm, No. I am not spontaneous...............

......................And you won't find my body in some woods a week later either. idiot.

le sigh... .....just another little 'Pfft' moment in time.

I Will Not lose my hiar for this.

Ok... now this has been rolling around in my brain since I first heard this commercial. There is a Laser Hair Center that says that if I have the hair removal treatment performed on my legs, my life will be better because ... "instead of having to shave my legs and waste important time... that important time I could be sharing with my family...."

Soooooo, I'm wondering exactly what important thing my family is doing while I'm in the shower for 30 minutes. And why wasn't I told about it sooner?

Look. It took me years to reclaim bathroom time as 'alone time'.

My kids are teens now. They no longer slump sobbing against the door, pitifully knocking on it because Mom went 'somewhere' without them. Well, they're done with the sobbing part anyway.

Eventually (kinda) they learned the closed door rule. The rule that says be polite. When someone is in the bathroom and the door is closed...there will be no frantic knocking on the door asking for money/to find something that is lost/feed them/inform me the cat got out/or that there is a phone call for me.

They learned that in less than 3 minutes Mom will appear again and that I will still miraculously be able to hand out money/find a lost item/make lunch/go find the missing dog/cat or take a phone call, just as well as I could have done before I was in the bathroom. I did not flush the mommy powers away. I tried. I know.

I mean, short of the house being on fire, blood or broken bones concerning them or the cat; do not come banging on the bathroom door when I'm in there. Their world will survive until the bathroom door opens again.

And now this. A company insinuating to Moms that even that short time she spends doing girlie things is too much time spent not caring for her family. More Guilt. Great.

I suppose they'd be all for me getting the laser hair removal onmy head too... you know, to eliminate the 10 extra minutes I spend washing my hair. What next? Getting a cath?

Call me selfish....but I'm keeping the hair on my head. And I'll continue to remove hair the old fashioned way... one nick at a time... But better yet, I'm keeping my 30 minutes in the bathroom. I get to snicker when the kids forget the closed door rule and come knocking on the door. I pretend I can't hear their calls over the sound of the shower.

.........and yes, as long as I don't hear sirens in my driveway, this amuses me.

Vroom to Screech in under $500

You know that Mother's curse?

The one where your mother says..."Wait til you have children of your own...".

This is usually uttered in response to a stupid.terrible.dangerous.problematic thing you did when you were a kid.

That curse's power is also in direct correlation to how many times you forced your mother to utter it.

In my case, my mother must have uttered it daily to me.....

Cause my Son#3 just got a speeding ticket.

Again.

Ready.... Set... ggg err...

I would gladly give a pool update...................

..............if I had one!

I did go buy a table, chairs, umbrella, and chaises for the pool deck.

......What can I say.... I'm optimistic.

Toy Time

It's a beautiful Sunday... 75 degrees... so guess who has the new toy?!!




Who? ~PFFT! You guys know better than that. ....



Wooho! Ok. It's the boy child's... But Mom will be borrowing it for sure.

The only thing more fun would be a pool!

Don't ask. hahaha.

A Job With a View

All this week I have been working from the corporate apartment, supervising the removal of the carpet and subsequent installation of hardwood floors.

You can see the downtown Atlanta skyline off in the distance.


21 floors up. I tried not to look down too much. Heights... eek!


All in all though, not a bad way to spend two days work.

Now I see why one of Atlanta's nicknames is "The City of Trees".................


..............and also the City of Pollen.

Invisible

I've been putting in some long work hours this week.

One night until 10:30pm at job #1; and until 1am at job #2 for a few nights.

It felt sooo good to sleep til 11 am today. Too bad I was supposed to be at work at 8:30am.

No, seriously. I slept through 2 alarm clocks and nobody noticed.

Nobody.

Decisions, Decisions

Mom's can play dirty.

I didn't sign the enlistment papers, nor did I refuse to sign them.

I simply made him list the pros and cons about joining early (or at all) and ....ahem... 'let' ...ahem.... him decide.

Fortunately for us both, he decided that although there were benefits to joining now, there was also no rush and that he would think about it again, after graduation from high school.

Smart boy.

I guess now I can unlock the door and let him out of his room.

Rerun

I'm a rerun.... Again.

But, for as many times as we've done this....... this shooting competition will feel a little different.

A new awareness.

My baby Isn't a Baby... but Don't Tell Him I Said That.

Son #3 is my baby. My baby is 17.

We practice having our children leave us. We leave them with a baby-sitter, send them to school or even let them spend the night with family or sleep overs at a friends.

But when the time comes for them to leave us for the last time, none of the practicing we did for 18 years truly prepares us for letting them go.

Since he was very young, my son Ian has wanted a career in the Military.

He has been to a military "High Adventure" camp which turned out to be a disciplinary camp..... and he loved it. He is enrolled in the Marine ROTC jr program in high school; participating on the exhibition rifle team and is also the team captain of the ROTC rifle shooting team in high school. Military seems to be in his blood. I'm proud of him.. but. Well you know.

Now he is at that point in his life, when his direction is being defined. It's no surprise that he wants to pursue a military career. It's been obviously apparent for many years that there is where is his heart lies. And even more painfully apparent when he asked a National Guard recruiter to come to the house this evening to talk to me.

Ian didn't need to talk to him again, he knows what he wants. He wanted the recruiter to talk to me. He can sign up now and qualify for a full scholarship to college next fall after he graduates from high school. He will get a years head start on his rank. He will also be eligible for deployment at anytime during his first two years of college. Deployment.

Deployment.

I cannot ..... CANNOT .... With any part of my breaking heart, sign papers that would allow my son to possibly be deployed in a year or two.

This is a decision I cannot and will not make, a decision that will so drastically impact or possibly end his life.

It is a decision he will have to make on his own when he is legally able.

I have 5 months until then ....... 5 very, very, very short months.

Visitors

Both the recruiter and the Jeep showed up today.

I liked the Jeep better.

I live in the Hood. A neighborhood, that is.

Who knew that in my little middle class, suburban soccer mom, flower bed, bermuda grass yards of suburbia hid.... the hood.
........and that my son was a graffiti artist in said hood.

Just think that the childs room they did this to was with the blessing of his parents!

WTF where they thinking?!!

Maybe I should call his parents and apologize for giving my son those artist pens (and forgetting to give him a sketch book) for Christmas?

They look quite the thugs, don't they.

Chris (a neighbor child on the left) just left for two years on his Mission with the Mormon Church.


My son #3 (on the right) just told me that his father is showing up with the jeep for him AND also that a National Guard Recruiter is coming to the house on Thursday to talk to me.

A recruiter? I think I'm freaked.

No wait.. I know I am.

Squeeze Me, I need Juice

I'm in the mood to write something really witty today.....

Too bad my brain won't cooperate.

A friend of mine recently said..."The one thing all creative people have in common is that they think they're creative."

....damn, I knew there was a catch.

Meow... no wait Woof!

Marriage......... Been there, done that, and spent years washing the t-shirts of the kids.

After talking to a variety of men this weekend, I had an epiphany about them. Well that and I got the idea off another blog....

Men Ages 0-15: Want a mother
Men Ages 16-30: Want to have sex with you, and every other woman on the planet.
Men Ages 30-50: Want to find someone that will have sex on a regular basis.
Men Ages 50-80: Want a mother.

One thing about dating in your 40's, you are no longer compelled to date every man that asks. There's no sense of urgency to 'find the one'.

My lists of "No thank you" reasons grow monthly. So far, I say 'no thank you' to:

Short men. Sorry, but height is a real issue for me. You can be over weight, cuz I'll work the weight off you (lol)...but short is forever and it is a turn off for me.

Men with small children. Sorry again. I just spent 20 years raising my kids. As much as I love and adore them, I don't want to be raising another set.

Men that don't live near me. Sorry, I'm just not into hotel meets. Yea, yea, I know it's worked for 'so and so', but for me it doesn't. I know it's romantic, and exciting, all those weekend hotel meetings.... but sooner or later that gets old.

Add all that up...and it looks like I'm going to be the cat lady of the neighborhood. Well sans the cats.....

I'm really more of dog person. (lol)

Pink sisters

I'm not a big prankster. I don't do well with practical jokes and always thought it was un sportsmanlike to make somebody look like an idiot.

Maybe cause I was usually the unsuspecting idiot. Can you say naive?

It never failed that I always forgot about April Fools Day and usually I'd fall for every dumb ploy/trick/joke people pulled.

The one that became a family joke was the year my mother once woke my sister and I up yelling that there was a pink elephant in the yard. My sister and I both jumped out of bed and ran to the front window to see this amazing sight.

My mother was known to drink quite a bit and I wonder if a pink elephant was a form of her own little private joke..... But regardless...... It was 7 am, and I have never been a morning person! So at 7 am a pink elephant sounded perfectly plausible to an 11 year old and her totally embarassed 16 year old sister... "Pink elephants," my mom would snicker at us every April 1 ..... It became a family joke.

And although we fell for more stupid jokes and pranks throughout the years, that one pink elephant for some reason always made us cringe to be reminded of.

So today I need to call my big sis and remind her to look out for pink elephants running rampant today....

Cringing shouldn't be done alone.... I mean isn't that what sisters are for?