Sorry, I know it's been a while

Not really too much to say, but I thought I should update this anyway.

Sara and Amelia were here last weekend. We had a good time. I didn't have anything "planned" while they were here (sound familiar?). They arrived Saturday afternoon and left Monday morning. Amelia is just waaaay too cute. Holy cow!

Sunday afternoon was the annual neighborhood party at Paul & Erin's. Great people and yummy food. Have I mentioned before how wonderful this neighborhood is??

I finished a terrific book. The Ship of Brides by JoJo Moyes. It's about 600 Australia war brides traveling to England at the end of WWII. They are traveling on an aircraft carrier---alongside it's entire (male) crew. The story focuses on four women who are roommates on the trip. Each one is unique and has very different experiences on board. I highly recommend it!

I need to get my PTA act together. We put out another newsletter today and our first general meeting is next Tuesday. Yikes. I need to put together my binder so I'm ready for everything. Hopefully I can be totally different from normal and get stuff typed and filed right away. We'll see how it goes......

Audrey will have school on Friday this week. It will be her first Friday so far. She's looking forward to it. That evening is Bingo Night at school. I think the girls and I will try to go. Tomorrow (Thursday) I will help in Emma's class.

Have you been watching Dancing With the Stars? We tape it and then watch it when we can. For last week, that meant we didn't watch it until yesterday. The girls only saw half and I watched the rest late last night. Somehow the results show tape didn't work last week. But I did accidentally turn the TV on right at the very very end so I know who lost. Hopefully it will tape properly tonight. I haven't watched it yet, but it looks like last night's tape worked. Whew.

My back is hurting, so I think that's all I'll do for now. I need to go through the girls' playroom and reorganize stuff now anyway. There's a kids only garage sale through Burlington Parks & Rec in early November. I told the girls they should have a table for it. We shopped at the one last spring, but this time we'll try and sell stuff. Get rid of a bunch of toys, puzzles, movies, that big stupid phone from the magazine sales fundraiser last year..... The usual.

Do I need a focus??

I read a blog today that's just about one person's opinions on wine. I've seen blogs that focus on just one topic: a tv show, a celebrity, an item......do I need to focus on something? Or am I just some middle of the road thing. Yeah, middle of the road. I'll take that.

I just finished watching Grey's Anatomy. I really like that show! However, I started watching it late. I have the first season DVDs on hold at the library though. Eventually I will get caught up! Tonight's episode was the end of last season (I've seen clips from it for weeks now!! I'm glad I finally got to see it) and I cried. How many tears can I shed in one day??? (wow, how dramatic is that????? when you call my girls "drama queens" you will know where it comes from now, won't you?) Emma, Audrey, and I went to see the movie Barnyard today. I read reviews of it on www.epinions.com the other day so I knew some of the plot. I chose not to mention some of it to the girls since I figured Audrey would decide it would be too scary and not want to go. So we went to the movie and we (and by we I probably mean I) shed a tear or two. Not a bad movie. And then there was Grey's Anatomy. More tears! My goodness. I really should get a life!

Did I mention that I need to lose weight? Fall is here and my jeans don't fit. I have a feeling, however, that popcorn from a movie theater is not terribly points friendly per Weight Watchers. I figured that all I'd eaten before was an egg cooked in salsa and I ate nothing after that (drinking, however, is another story) so my points are still somewhat within range. We'll see how this goes. Remember, if I get back to my goal I can get my tattoo redone!

So writing that made me feel like I should have another window open showing my blog while I write on this one. I know I've mentioned the "weight loss equals re-do tattoo" thing before. So has everything else I've written been mentioned before too?

"Lord I was born a ramblin' (wo)man...."

Did I tell you the horrible horrible news from last night??????? I had a meeting to attend and figured I'd be back around 8:00 at the absolute earliest. So I set the VCR to tape Dancing With the Stars on the tv upstairs. That meant that House would be unwatched until I arrived home and got the girls to bed (damn priorities). I tired to set the VCR downstairs. I really did!! It's a crap DVD/VCR player. We've known it for a while, but this really solidified my opinion. House did not get taped. A week without Robert Sean Leonard????? Good thing I have Dead Poet's Society and Much Ado About Nothing on tape.

As of 4:00 today the Burlington-Edison School District bond had not passed. Feck. Any bets placed on whether or not this will pass will go directly to the B-E School District to offset the next school bond. That's fair, right? Send in your money now!



I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts. ~Orson Wells

So far not so good

As of 8:28 tonight the Burlington Edison school bond was failing. There's still time though! It is huge. $74 million. But the crowding in the schools!!! I shouldn't fret. Tomorrow is another day.

Anybody want some eggs? Our chickens are producing quite well and really the only time we eat eggs is on the weekends. Although I did have some scrambled eggs/egg whites in a tortilla for dinner. I'm trying to lose weight again. Not so much for getting my tattoo redone, but more for fitting into jeans since fall is coming. It's been a long long long summer......

Bring on the rain

Emma and Audrey were playing outside when the sky opened up. They ran in to get their raincoats and umbrellas. Boy did it pour!! In the picture they're standing under the eaves at the front door. The rain just cascades off when it's raining that hard. It's the second time in a week that it's rained like that. Sure, now the rain comes, after I killed all my plants....

Fortunately Emma and Audrey are well enough to go to school. Both girls worked on homework yesterday. Emma got the bulk of hers done (it's all due Friday) and Audrey finally completed hers. It's no wonder Audrey doesn't know her alphabet yet. She will not sit and work on something!! Now, read the girl a book and she'll remember facts from it for eons. But sitting down and working on something is near impossible. And to make matters worse she has my personality. The whole "I can't do it" "I'll mess up" thing. I made her get up and do 5 jumping jacks each time she said she "can't". It still took hours for her to write her name 6 times. She hasn't learned lowercase letters yet, so I had her practice before she actually wrote on the homework paper. Sheesh! You'd think I'd named her Catalinamagdalinahoopensteinerwalendinerhoganboganlogan. She complained that Audrey was just too long. I'm not sure I'm going to make it through this!!

My sister is married. Who knows, maybe she even reads my blog, but she already knows I'm not happy about it. Last week her boyfriend/fiance text messaged her that they were breaking up and he was getting back together with his ex-wife. And his divorce had just been in the paper that day! (I didn't know he was married---they'd talked about getting married this summer. Kind of hard to do when you already have a spouse.) Then last night she calls and tells me they got married. I asked her why. She said "because we love each other". Huh. Sure as heck didn't sound like it last week!! When I talked to her the day he broke up with her she said she wanted to talk to him. I told her fine, but if he wants to date again or whatever would she please promise me that she wouldn't do anything for a month. She promised.

A while ago my brother told me that he liked my blog. (Yes, I was shocked and amazed that he would even read it.) I told him that I didn't have much to talk about, and some things I would want to talk about I couldn't because family and friends would read this. He suggested that I just write it, but change the names. Thanks for the tip, "Les"! I won't mention your wife though, don't want her to get used to seeing her name in print! Maybe I should start another blog and not tell anyone. Then I could vent all I wanted without fear. Until some random person found it and started circulating it and then I'd wind up on www.snopes.com and I couldn't even just move to get away, becuase it would be on the internet and everyone would see, not just family and friends, and I wouldn't be able to go anywhere without people pointing and staring, running away from me with distrust in their eyes, worrything that they would be the next victim impaled on the sharp spike of my blog.

I have a PTA board meeting tonight. I'd better start gathering together my stuff so I'm not running around in a panic at 6:00.

Well, as I always say, a family of freaks is better than no family at all. "Family Guy" 

I think it's Autumn

I'm chilled and I've turned the heat on in the house. I think that means autumn is here. Yay!!! My favorite season and home to my favorite holiday---Halloween. I suppose it's too early to start decorating for Halloween, huh.

I have sick kids at home today. Both of them have colds. Blech. Emma had a high temperature last night. Today she's coughing and blowing her nose like crazy. Ah, but she's still well enough to yell at her sister. Maybe I should intervene.....

I just wrote a long email to our family, so don't really have much to say that hasn't already been said. And badly at that. Let's see, here's a recap: sick kids, Audrey rode the bus, I went to Curriculum Night last night, our anniversary tomorrow....

I found a reason to watch the news today. My friend was making salads last night to take to her mother's rehearsal dinner. She finally finished and sat down to watch the news. She found out that some spinach had been recalled due to e coli. Guess what she'd made. Yep, a big ol' spinach salad! What luck! It would be so easy to have just gone to bed instead of watching the news and here she got some important information. Weird how that happens. Kind of like when I bought a copy of Good Housekeeping magazine and in the recalls section found info on a slow cooker being recalled. Hmmmm.....the handles break, my sister-in-law's slow cooker broke that way! Sure enough, I gave Sara the info and she got a new slow cooker. OK, so maybe Nancy's brush with e coli poisoning is more impressive, but it's my blog dammit!

Mmmmm....lunch time. We should have eggs. Our chickens are laying pretty consistently! And some of the eggs are gigantahuge!!! The carton doesn't even close. We've had some eggs break in transit, so I bought a cheap basket for the girls to use when they gather the eggs. No more baseball gloves or Barbie jeeps. We also have some eggs that are broken in the coop. Some just cracked slightly, and others will holes poked in them. It's fun having the chickens. But does anybody want a rooster?? The girls have renamed him Dinner.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~George Eliot

First day of school pictures

Audrey's first day of kindergarten. She started out with a chilly, foggy morning and ended with a hot, red-cheeked afternoon. Happy and exhausted. Yea! Stuffy nosed. Boooo.
Emma's first day of second grade last week. Might as well put these pictures together, right? She's lovin' second grade, her teacher, and her friends. Yea!
My school girls. Wow. How did that happen?

Emma and Audrey are enjoying Bay View Elementary School. It was so weird today to have both of them gone all day. At around noon it really hit me. With preschool I'd be picking up Audrey around that time. But when 12 o'clock hit I realized I still had 2 1/2 hours before any kids were home. And on Thursday that will change to 3 1/4 hours since they will be riding the bus. Audrey wasn't too happy that I picked her up today. There were a ton of kindergarteners in line for the buses. She'll be one of them on Thursday!

When I picked up Audrey her face was beet red. I could feel the heat coming out of the room. Yowza. I sure wouldn't like being in there. But in a few months it'll be cool. The principal was in the room helping the kids get ready to leave. She called Audrey over when she saw me, and told me that she'd been calling Audrey "Emma" most of the day. She said Audrey finally told her, "I'm not Emma. I'm Audrey." Now what amazed me is that the principal even knew Emma's name to confuse the two. I'd been a bit of a fixture at the school last fall during the Book Fair and again in the spring. And I'm on the PTA board, but I'm still impressed that she recognized my girls and had their names figured out. I'm still not used to this whole "big school" mentality! Add 10 or 12 students into Emma's or Audrey's class and you have the size of my high school graduating class. Will I ever wrap my head around the vastness of this district? Many people I'm sure would laugh at me considering this to be a huge school. But it's sure huge to me!!!

I need a haircut.

My mouth doesn't hurt anymore!!!!!!! Gah, it was awful. It's so nice to be able to talk. And eat. And drink without a straw. I was better yesterday, even able to have a two hour phone conversation with a friend.

We all know where my priorities lie: the television. Just a few minutes until House is on. Robert Sean Leonard. Yum. Emma and Audrey are watching Trading Spaces: Boys vs. Girls. They are hooked on the show. Tonight is also the first night for Dancing With the Stars. I'm taping that while watching House. What a busy night. Don't even try to call me.....

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book. Groucho Marx

I often read while watching TV. What does that say about me?????? 

Marian Keyes does it again...

I just finished Last Chance Saloon by Marian Keyes. I feel like I should reread Watermelon and Sushi for Beginners. Did I love those books all the way through? Or did I feel like they were hard to get into at first, then got tired of them in the middle, but muddled through and loved the end? 'Cause that's the way I've felt about Rachel's Holiday, Anybody Out There, and now Last Chance Saloon. I remember getting hooked on Keyes' books a while back. And now I'm rehooked having read a few more. But what drew me in to begin with? The writing? The characters? (I want to be Mammy Walsh some day.) The language? Or, should I say, the fecking language? Is it "chick lit" with an edge? An international edge? An Irish edge? Or am I just enamored with books?

Tomorrow (I can still say that for two minutes) Audrey starts school. Oh boy is she excited. Ecstatic. I'm surprised she went to sleep well tonight. I'm looking forward to coming home tomorrow morning and just staying around the house. No wondering "is the other mom tired of the playdate and sending my kid home", just coming home and knowing that at 2:30 I need to run out and pick up the girls. Wow! What will I do with myself? Mmmmm.....nothin'. You were right.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare. Harriet Martineau

Um. I think I'm a reader......

The Canker Chronicles

My mouth still hurts. A lot! A doctor friend last night suggested rinsing with a mix of Benadryl and Kaopectate. Yummers! That did help for a while. Another friend asked if I was taking Lysine. Remembered I had some and have taken a few. That and the Aleve with an occasional rubbing of Orajel and I'm good to go! For less than ten minutes.

The worst part? I'm not losing all that much weight despite this "diet".

OK, that's not true. The worst part is the pain. Hurts to eat. Hurts to drink. Hurts like heck to talk.

grrrrrrrr (said through tightly clenched teeth)

Blog as big sticky note

Remind me the next time I'm whining on and on about canker sores to go back and read yesterday's blog entry. Let me tell you, rinsing my mouth with hydrogen peroxide sure helped! Made me gag a bit and my tummy felt funny for a while, but it worked. I also rinsed once with Benadryl, not quite as icky. My mouth feels much better today. On the way out to the school bus this morning I was asking Emma questions about school and she said "I have a question for you. Is your mouth feeling better? 'Cause you sure are talking better today." Yep. Much better. But talking with Emma for twenty minutes while we waited for the bus did irritate the sores a bit. Time to be quiet. Until Audrey wakes up again of course.

Sounds like Emma had a great day at school yesterday. She knows quite a few kids in her class and one of her good friends from last years class is with her. Also a girl she's known since they were less than a year old and another who is a neighbor. And then there are the boys.....

Emma talked about one of the cool jobs in the classroom. Somebody is designated to be the phone answerer. So if there is an adult in the room and the phone rings the appointed student asks for permission to answer the phone. Emma sounds nervously excited for it to be her turn. She said it looks like she's library person this week.

Justin, Audrey, and I went in to meet Audrey's kindergarten teacher. Coming in with us at the same time was a girl we had met at a couple of birthday parties and knew she'd be in the part-time kindergarten class too. Looking at the names on the board there's also the daughter of some friends of friends of our, and one of the moms in class looked really familiar--the daughter-in-law of some former neighbors. Her daughter will be in the same class.

Have I explained Bay View kindergarten? There is a full-time class. Monday through Friday all day. For the low low price of $250 per month! You guess right, we're not in that one. There's also an all day Tuesday, Thursday, "every other" Friday class. That's the one Audrey is in. A couple weeks ago a second part-time kindergarten class was added---all day Monday, Wednesday, "every other" Friday.

Bay View Elementary School was built to hold 450 students. This year enrollment is 575. The sixth, seventh, and eighth graders are all out in portables behind the school. I'll be voting YES on the bond issue this month. Of course I don't want my property taxes to be even higher, but I also don't want the schools to be that crowded. Kids are being shuffled all around. Before I left the school yesterday morning someone came in with three kids who had gone to the wrong school that morning and were supposed to be at Bay View. Silly kids, they went to the school they'd gone to last year! What were they thinking?? (did you detect a note of sarcasm there? good.) While we still lived in Anacortes I was stressed about which school I wanted to send my kids to. My understanding was that you could request any school. Which one would I choose? The closest one? Or would I let other people's opinions cloud my judgement? And we left there when Emma still had one more year of preschool to finish!! And now I'm in a district that is so overcrowded kids are getting shuffled all over the place regardless of where they live. Maybe if I stay active in the PTA they won't move mine.....

Uh-oh. The computer is telling me that it isn't connecting to blogger. I'm going to post this right now in the hope that I won't lose this entire thing. I'm sure there are typos and misspelled words, but I'm not going to fix that now.

Hydrogen Peroxide. Yum!

I have canker sores under my tongue. Owie. Ouchie. It's hard to talk, eat, and drink. I know I need to lose weight, but is this really the right way?? I finally went online to find out if there's anything I could do about them. (Other than put alum on them. That hurts so much!) (Oh wait. These canker sores do too.) I read that pretty much anybody can get these sores, but it's higher in women in the teens and early twenties. Nope, not me. Some ways to help the pain include: taking acetaminophen or ibuprofen (just did it), swishing the mouth with equal parts milk of magnesia and Benadryl, swishing the mouth with diluted hydrogen peroxide (just did it). The pain is a little less right now, but I've also not been talking for the past 1/2 hour or so.

Boy, what a whiner!! Yup, that's me!

Emma had her first day of school today. Justin picked her up after school. Poor girl was exhausted. She practically stumbled into the house. I haven't had much chance to talk to her about it yet. I'll get some info out of her later and report back tomorrow.

Audrey met her teacher today too. Justin and I took her to her classroom so we could fill out some paperwork and look at the classroom. Two kindergarten classes will share this room. One meets Tuesday, Thursday and every other Friday and the other is Monday, Wednesday every other Friday. It will be interesting to see how it works in the one classroom. I still haven't looked at the schedule to see what Audrey's Fridays are. I'll do that later and get them on the calendar.

Emma and Audrey have friends over. I'd better go downstairs and keep an eye on things.

You have a cough? Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax - tomorrow you'll be afraid to cough. ~Pearl Williams

School is creeping up on us...

Emma and Audrey got cute haircuts yesterday! I convinced Audrey to go a bit shorter this time. I wasn't sure how she'd like it, but while she was having it cut, I peeked in the mirror and saw that she was smiling. Yay! Emma's looks nice and fresh too. Guess they're ready for school.

School starts next Wednesday for Emma. She has her supplies. She did her summer homework. She has some new clothes. Guess she's ready! Wow. Second grade....

Wednesday afternoon Audrey will meet her teacher and see her classroom. She'll have her first day of kindergarten the following Tuesday. She's so excited! We just got her supply list the other day. I'd already bought some of the basic stuff, just need to take care of the crayons. Emma's list requested a box of 48 crayons so that's what I got Audrey too. But the list I have from her teacher specifies a box of 8. I may just pick 8 primary/basic colors out of the big box for her. That works, right? I bought Audrey a couple pair of jeans yesterday. Jeans are something she doesn't have much of and are kind of hard to fit. Fortunately I found some yesterday that fit great. And they were buy one get one free. Yay! So I think she's pretty much ready now too.

I'll go to the school today and help put together PTA packets. On Tuesday morning I'll go in to help with the PTA bulletin boards. Everything is happening so fast!!!! Yesterday I bought more books for the kindergarteners. In the spring we used book credit from the Scholastic Book Fair to get 60 books for the incoming kindergarteners. As of this week we have 72 kindergarteners. Yikes! They added an entire class! So I went to Borders Express in the mall and before I paid I asked about a teacher discount. He asked if I'd signed up and I explained my dilemma to him. The manager was standing there on her way out and authorized the discount. She said it was pretty obvious that the pile of books I had weren't for my personal use. That was very nice and I gushed my many many thanks to them. See, I used to work for a great company!

How boring is this blog entry?? Pretty mundane stuff here.

I'm back from the school. The other people I was scheduled to meet weren't there (just got a call---they were still printing stuff for the packets), but we dropped off the kindergarten books. Got to meet Audrey's new teacher! I'm sure she'll have a terrific year. Emma and Audrey said hello to Mrs. Tolf, Emma's teacher from last year. Before we left they wanted to say goodbye so we went down to her room and on the way back we talked with Emma's teacher for this year Mrs. DenAdel. It was nice to visit with her for a while and Emma got to see her new classroom. The girls are so excited for school to begin!!

If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers. ~Edgar W. Howe