Random Thoughts.
Now Playing: No Rain by Blind Melon
Topic: Rambling on

Crash! Free Firewood! Yours for the Hauling...
Now Playing: (Dont Fear) The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult
Topic: Rambling on

I was at work this morning struggling to make it to the halfway point in the day so I could go home sick & I got a text message from miss 16 who was home from school with the diareah & vomiting I was struggling against while at work. The text said 'yeah, I just almost died' I was a little disturbed but knowing her proclivity for theatrics I just texted back 'what are you talking about?'

This first picture shows the tree that sheared itself off in the high winds we had in VA today, my house is on a hill with a row of obnoxiously large pine trees behind it, the trees have worried me ever since we moved in (I've been afraid of tall trees falling on me since I was a very small child, my mother attributes this to a very large tree which was struck by lightning behind our house when I was about 2 & 1/2, she says it shook the house & I do remember her leaving me alone in the kitchen while she went out to look at it in the rain- not my earliest memory but a close runner up) & I still hope to have all these large pines taken out eventually due to the hill & the wind coming in from the west, the tree broke at a spit about 10 feet off the ground & fell down the hill. Miss 16 said it shook the house & scared her half to death! I'm not surprised, I always miss this stuff but in a way I'm just as glad that I did, we had a tree fall down at the trailer similar to this (though it was the whole top of the tree) & I was at work for that too, it narrowly missed hitting my trailer & my neighbor's trailer, it fell in such a way that it just hit the ground behind the backs of our trailers if you can imagine! That was actually scarier, this one, due to the hill & the fact that the wind nearly always comes from the west was no question going to fall downhill & away from the house (I have been telling myself this about all the trees behind the house since we moved in back in May of 2005)

You can see from this picture of where the shear occoured though, & in the above picture, how it is more than half the thickness of the tree & in the lower picture that the wood is gray not yellow at the break so I think that part of the tree was dead or dying before it fell. the red glow is the setting sun hitting the branches, (ok, maybe it's a tree spirit?) Directly below it is the break. Anyone nearby who want's some good pine wood can have it for the hauling, we don't have a woodstove or fireplace & I've been warned by a couple of people that the chimneys in the house would have to be completley redone before I could have one. (that would also require removing the beesnests from the inner chimney & the squirell nests from the basement one- neither thing is high on my to do list)

  Mr 7 had a blast climbing on the top part of the tree among the branches (I remember I loved doing that on the couple of occasions when my Father couldn't find enough downed trees in our woods to cut up & would have to actually fell a tree for our firewood) 7 & miss 10 went back out after I came in & played together on the tree for almost an hour - until it was too dark to see & I had to call them in. The vomiting has slowed & with liberal aplications of immodium our Christmas shopping expedition will not be rescheduled, especially since I already had to reshcedule it once due to silliness & madness at work causing me to have to work 8 hours of overtime before sunday (of course, by getting sick I screwed that up!) I couldn't keep down the immodium this morning or I probably could have made it the whole day. I would prefer to go alone & get everyone's shopping taken care of but I can't very well do so, I don't like to leave the kids home on days when I'm home & they're home, instead I intend to go shopping on Tuesday or Wednesday, my days off, while they're at school, finish it all & lock up the shed until a few days before the 'big event'. Tommorow I can at least take care of the kids choosing what they want to give to each other & to me & I may pick up a few small items here & there which I can hide under coats until 16 takes the younger ones to the car & I check out alone. (One definite benefit to going alone on a weekday, the stores are much less crowded) I am not looking forward to the shopping, it's not hard for miss 16, she's an artist so paint, canvasses etc are easy, clothes are always appreciated though I don't always get what she likes exactly. mr 7 is easy too, the hardest thing about shopping for him is how much I can spend, if it's Batman, Spiderman, Imaginext or Magnetix he's all set. Miss 10 however, is at that age where she's too young for makeup, too old for Barbies & Babies, Clothes she gets from family & friends with kids older than her & so I only buy her a few special pieces (& some jeans, it seems there's never enough jeans) I also don't really like to get the kids clothes for Christmas (except 16 because she actually likes them!) it just doesn't seem right.

  Going to bed early tonight to rest up for tommorow's shopping barrage, I'm also supposed to do the hair of one of 16's friends who has to be in a wedding tommorow morning. That should be interesting.

November Funk
Now Playing: Far Away by the Offspring
Topic: Rambling on

Here I am again, annother 'weekend' gone & not much acomplished, well, I did pay off some bills this week which is important & I know where my kid's Christmas is coming from now. (thanks to a loan which has a lower interest rate than my credit cards & the other things I'm paying off) Still, even so, I'm deep into my November funk,

"No Fruits, No Flowers, No Leaves, no birds, November" 

                                                                      -Thomas Hood.

It works for me, I used to be insulted by that saying, November being my birthday month & all, but then birthdays stopped being a great thing & began being a torturous, embarasing, never-live-up-to-my-expectations event (this was around age 11 & had, I think, more to do with hormones & my family's genetic tendencies towards depression than any real lack of good things on my birthday) My parents were poor, to a point which I could never stand to be in my life now most of my childhood & they made no bones about it & so I grew up with the thought in the back of my mind that every gift I got could mean no food next week I had a lot of guilt needless to say. Christmas, because everyone gave & got didn't feel that way but because on my birthday it was just about me I felt like it was wrong & I was not deserving of any fuss, I made my own birthday cake most years. Except for the year I turned 17, my mother made my cake because I had a charity thing to help with on the Saturday morning that we were having my party & while the cake was cooling, my mother was vacuming the house (a regular Saturday occourence- we all made plans to be elsewhere) & my Father & Brother were coming to pick me up from the charity rummage sale my brothers dog ate the cake! My mother was PISSED! it was really pretty funny in retrospect - I'm not sure she thinks so though- So I came back home & made the birthday cake myself once again. One of my best birthdays was my very first in Floyd, it was 1987 & I had just picked up & left MA with Chrissie a few weeks before, I made the dinner (I don't remember where the Turkey even came from) & a cake, for some obscure reason I bought a tub of premade- Cherry icing, ugh, not a cherry fan anymore I have to say!) I still have a butterfly pin & the earrings I was given that year! It was the year I went from 18 to 19 & I remember Chrissie saying 19 was lots better than 18. Other years, with 16's dad & my family when 16 was a little baby were bleah, just annother day with my grandmother at least being kind- some years my birthday, the 26th actually falls on Thanksgiving & those are the worst, people like to suggest putting candles in a pie (I hate pie- not the filling, just the crust) I usualy just celebrate over the weekend following the holiday.  In later years my ex did his best to give me good birthdays, the infamous first year when he took my oldest out with him & I went to take a hot bath (my favorite thing when I have free time & no kids to interrupt) & half an hour into it he came back in & was not pleased to find me in the tub, he had a bunch of our friends & his family outside, ready to come in & surprise me for my birthday! yeah, that was great! That was the year my friend J gave me a card which at the bottom she'd lovingly scrawled '16 years till you're 40' (her birthday was 6 weeks before mine & annother friend of her's had done the same to her! - just passing on that happy feeling!) well, this year I'll be 38 & so it's 2 years till I'm 40 & I don't really care, I've been so fat for so long I've felt old nearly forever! It's all in your head, that's what my 88 year old grandmother tells me, she says she feels in her head about the same as she did when she was 25 or 30 still & I can see that, it's about the same for me.                                                                                                               In recent years (you read that: since my ex left) things have been tight most years & often the only notice I took of my birthday was that when I asked my mother or grandmother for money to help with whatever the most recent emergency was it was couched in the terms: Could I have whatever you were going to send for my birthday early? & of course a cake which the kids were more interested in than I was. Last year & the year before I've been able to actually have a birthday dinner out & buy a couple of books or some clothes & this year is shaping up the same which is a plus. I think I'm going to get a scanner, I've wanted one for awhile so I can put old pictures on here but I thought they were really expensive, this past weekend we went to a big box electronics store to buy a dvd I'd wanted to see again which I couldn't rent from the local video store - they didn't have it at all (Empire Records for the record & the store did have it for a pretty low price too!) & they had a scanner for $104.99 (!) I'd probably go with the next step up since it was only about 40 bucks more & looked like a more versatile model though. That's one thing I don't like so much about being the only adult in the house- decisions like this are all mine to make & sometimes I could use a little input! Annother thing about it is I usualy just buy my own birthday presents, mostly because I want books & don't always know what books until I'm in the store looking at them. 

    So then, after the birthday (& I guess, Thanksgiving, which I HATE- mostly because I'm here & my whole family is in Mass- my fault though & because I hate turkey) comes the whole Christmas debacle, I used to love Christmas we had boxes & boxes of decorations which came down from the attic the weekend after Thanksgiving & which my Brother & I pored over, checking for breakage, loose or dead bulbs in the light strings etc. until the first weekend in December when we were allowed to decorate (we had control of this from the time I was 8 forward - with a little artistic direction from my grandmother who lived with us-) There were cardboard houses, metal people to walk among them with small mirrors for their ice skating rinks, fake holly & pine garlands, we had a plastic electric candle in every window with white bulbs & plastic poinsettia rings around the base & a big pine tree in the front yard was lit with colored lights, the tree inside we put up a week to 10 days before the holiday & we always had white lights on it (my mother & grandmother were purists & the most common kind of New England snob - the kind with historical ancestors- 'colored lights are garish & tacky unless you just have a few') I am nothing like them though & always felt out of place there, the more color the better, the brighter the better, that's one thing the ex & I were in total agreement on, we loved to put up christmas lights & we always had a lot, I remember the first time we ever saw those icicle lights that are everywhere now.

His aunt had them on her house & as we came down the road on christmas eve on the way to her house & we both said at the same time ' I want those next year!'           Those were lean years though, we were always so close to the bone back then, we had to have help from the Salvation Army every year, the last year I got help was 2003, I'm not to the point where I can donate & start giving back (except for change in the pot while I'm out shopping) but I don't actually need the help anymore (Knock on Wood!) I tried a Christmas Club back in 2004, it didn't help, they disbursed the money in October & 2 weeks later I had a problem with my car & had to use all the money I'd saved to fix the car. (not much, I was on the $5. a week plan so it was less than 300 bucks) Just like a raise at work, what ever they give you, your expenses expand to fill the gap so there's never any extra money!

Wednesday Wonderings
Now Playing: Stone in Love by Journey
Topic: Rambling on

I actually acomplished somethings during these days off! Some weeks by noon on Thursday I feel like I've done nothing but dishes & laundry that I can point to as acomplishments from my days off. This week, we got pumpkins, I have new spring bulbs to plant & I put insulation behind my bathtub to try to keep the bathroom warmer this winter (of course I haven't gone to the basement to staple more insulation up beneath the bathroom where it all fell down last winter nor have I stapled any in the garage where a couple of the walls are still bare) But I did the bathroom, I also did a ton of laundry, cooked a nice meal last night, picked up the house a couple times (it keeps getting messy - damn gremlins) listened to a dozen books read by mr 7, helped miss 10 with her homework in general & thoroghly pissed miss 16 off about ten times, just by giving my opinions on the dramas she has going on in her life- I guess I'm supposed to just listen, not express an opinion? I also wasted a lot of time playing mahjong solitaire, my new personal favorite game & definitely a time waster. But like many time wasters, video games, piano playing, embroidery & painting it puts me into a state of mind in which strange things come to me, I've been thinking about a guy I talked to at work on the phone who was from Woodstock Vermont. a place I've been multiple times, an old friend of mine had been there with annother friend of hers who was a native. the friend took me there to see the places her friend had shown her. Then I visited at least two other times on my own, once with a boyfriend & once with my grandmother. All the times I went there we stopped at  a really lovely resturant which served probably the best french onion soup I've ever had to this date. I told this guy that I'd been there & asked if the resturant was still there & he said yes, it was & that they still had great french onion soup, that was the entire exchange but it was a moment which I still remember, (it was probably about 2 years ago now) I think about all kinds of weird things while I'm playing video games or doing the other things I listed. I belive I do quite a bit of healing mentaly doing things like that, I know when I am busy or read a lot during my days off & don't get much time to just play around I usualy feel very not-ready to go back to work at the end of my time off.

Mahjong holds an odd facination for me also because when I was a kid I recieved my mother's doll house & a large box of stuff to go with it, there was furniture, miniatures & dolls in the box but also a lot of little things, dominoes, dice of all sizes & colors, game pieces of many descriptions & even little statues of some of the presidents, about 3 inches tall with their name inscribed on the base (there were about 5, Madison, Polk, JQ Adams Taft & Taylor. I still remember the names!) & about 20 or 30 mahjong tiles, I didn't know that was what they were, my mother didn't seem to either, she had many of them wrapped in paper & decorated to look like cereal boxes, books & gifts in her doll house but didn't know what the tiles were for (or at least she told me she didn't) she plays mahjong solitare too though so I guess she knows now! she grew up with 3 younger brothers though, & always said that the doll house was not just used by her - her brothers all used it too.

  Theres all kinds of stuff I'm supposed to be doing, my kids get state insurance, the state recently confirmed my ex's military status & now are pestering me to get my kids hooked up with the ex's military insurance. never mind that we've already had very bad dealings with the military insurance when he was in the navy back when we were only seperated, not actually divorced ( I went to counseling to determine if I wanted to stay married & to help me deal with him getting involved with a 19 year old girl right in our small town & moving in with her, he went awol from the navy while I was still in counseling & they ended up charging my doctor's office - where I was seeing the counselor- for visits they'd already paid for. It took me 4 years to pay that off- $20. here, $10. there. I don't want to be in that postition again & I hate to ask the doctor- same doctor for me & all 3 kids- I prefer a gp that way. To run that risk again.)

Today is a ladybug day too, This is one of those things I never saw in Massachusetts which I love about Virginia, it's 73 outside after 2 miserable, cold rainy days & ladybugs are swarming everwhere it's sunny at my house, on my porch & my back door. I took a picture but you can't really see them all hovering in the sun, Later I found they're swarming in at my back door- so here's a picture of that too. 

 I've been alternately working on a meme & looking at pictures of ghosts, I love scary stuff & there are tons of websites which have all kinds of stuff real & photo shopped available to look at, I bet they all get a ton of traffic at this time of year but I'm into that stuff all year long. I'm also looking for info on how to put some of the pictures I have on my hard drive on a disc, more at my ex's request than my own, he sent a ton of pictures to miss 10 & they're clogging up her email storage- he suggested we move them to a cd rom for storage, easy for him but I'm something of a computer novice, I know how to do what I do every day but I don't even know where to look to move them to a cd- maybe miss 16 does. Of course, I can't do anything until I actually invest in some cd roms!

  Just got my Receptor on my satellite dish for my internet changed out, this guy just showed up at my door & said he was here to replace it free of charge! Up on the roof he climbed & changed it out & climbed back down, took all of 10 minutes, I didn't even have to reboot the computer!  Maybe that will help with my intermitent signal problems, (I think it's a tree- the guy said a different tree than the one I was worried about though- annother reason to take down the pines behind my house! Now I just need a chain saw or someone motivated to do it- preferably not with cash)  He was telling me that what we're hearing at my work is correct no new installs until December- I had the option to learn to troubleshoot that too. but there was no raise involved, more work, more to remember but no financial compensation? I don't think so- anyway I'd have had to change shifts too & I LOVE my shift!!! After all, I only work 2 days in a row, it's always a Monday or a Friday for me (Credit to my boss for those immortal words!) & there's not that many 4 day a week 10 hour a day shifts available. The only valid reasons to learn to troubleshoot wild blue would have been because I wanted to go on days 9 to 530, (I don't) or because I wanted to learn about it (I do- but not enough to change shifts) 

   I'm looking forward to halloween week because I took a paid day off for the monday of that week, just for something to do! I have 3 or 4 left & while I have to save one for Christmas & I'm taking one for my birthday I didn't have any other reasons to take any, I might not even need one for Christmas, Last year we were supposed to work & were swapped off, we worked the tuesday after Christmas & had Christmas day off. I'm hoping they'll do that again, it changes every year, I've worked 2 out of 5 Christmases, I don't like to do it (I've actually changed my schedule in other years in order to have the holiday off) Lately though, we've been swapped off so we didn't have to work that day, this year though, because my group had it off last year, I think I may need that paid day off. I've started setting an alarm on my phone to make myself get off the computer before my little ones get home from school on Wednesdays so I can really concentrate on them & my song is playing on the phone so it's time to sign off- I've been rather incoherent & rambling if I do say so myself!

Becky the Name
Now Playing: Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes
Topic: Rambling on

According to the Kabala!

(Thanks ben-gal!) 

 * Although the name Becky creates an active mind and a restless urge to explore new ideas, we emphasize that it causes a blunt expression that alienates others.
       
    * This name, when combined with the last name, can frustrate happiness, contentment, and success, as well as cause health weaknesses in the solar plexus, and tension or accidents to the head.

    * The name of Becky makes you dynamic, restless, independent, ready to accept challenges, and outspoken.
       
    * You enjoy change, travel, and new experiences.
       
    * Reacting against injustice, you go out of your way to assist in creating fairness.
       
    * You are very creative and promotional, and work intensely to carry out your plans.
       
    * Though you have limitless enthusiasm for new ventures, you lose interest quickly once things become routine, as you dislike being forced to attend to detail and do monotonous work.

 Yeah, it sounds like me!

 

Music, one of my favorite things...
Now Playing: Rock On by David Essex.
Topic: Rambling on

   Ann  (dated 6/1) Wrote a blog entry which I've been thinking about since I read it, it's about song lyrics & their meanings to her, I've been working on a mental list of my own, but it seems they all have really long explanations, I'm going to put a similar one out one of these days for the lyrics part, for now though I'll share part of something similar which I wrote in my diary at 16 or so... songs & what they made me think of! Comments in parentheses are current day explanations.
l
Boys Of Summer, by Don Henley, walking on the dirt bike trails in Haverhill, fall of 1984, (I lived with my uncle & aunt for 7 months of 84 as a live in babysitter & I found early on that when my uncle walked in the door at 6, if I didn't walk right out the door he'd get me to watch the kids some more 'since I wasn't doing anything' so I took to taking long walks on these dirt bike trails, listening to my walkman & daydreaming)

Over The Hills & Far Away, by Led Zeppelin, walking in the rain with my walkman (it seemed, for awhile if it was raining & I was walking this song would come on the radio- of course, in Mass you just have to turn the radio on & spin the dial & most any song you can think of comes on some station or annother- they have SO many up there! Here in Virginia, there's 2 stations I like & 6 I tolerate, I have 10 presets & not enough radio stations to fill them here!)

Call to the Heart, by Guiffria, (& if you remember this song- well, wow! I didn't remember it until I read it here in the diary!) Chrissy & her then boyfriend (this was in 1986) having a fight in her chevy malibu with about 4 other people in the car, we were on our way back to where he lived to take him back & 'never see him again' & this song came on the radio, she turned it up & of course, no one went home never to be seen again! (man, were WE sappy!)

What Does it Take? Honeymoon Suite, My cousin Jen got to, once, in our teenage years, come for a visit to my house for a weekend, it was great & this one hit wonder had it's moment in the sun right at that point so I remember the two together.

Whos Crying Now, by Journey, This is a really OLD one, the year it came out, 1981, My Uncle & Aunt took my Grandmother, their daughter, who was an infant at the time & Me to Salisbury Beach & this song was playing on the radio, My Aunt & Uncle were holding hands while it was on & I remember watching them & hoping I'd have a marriage like theirs (as opposed to like my parents loveless toleration) Of course, little did I know, they weren't destined to last either. (my personal opinion now? No one is- but maybe I'm bitter!)

The Breakup Song, by Greg Kihn, well, not my first breakup, I was 17 before I ever had a boyfriend, I loved the tune though, & I remember being bummed out because I didn't have a boyfriend to break up with!

Can't Find My Way Home, by Blind Faith, this is a song which I think I've known my whole life, this & American Pie by Don Mclean I had the weirdest feeling of deja vu when I 'first' heard them when I was 12 or 13, it turned out that at a year & a half or so I knew all the words to to American Pie, courtesy of my parents, I never heard it at all between then & age 12 or 13 & it was so weird I didn't conciously remember the song but I knew what every word would be before it was sung on the radio, I've never had any confirmation but Can't find my way was similar to that- I don't know where I'd have heard it though, American Pie was something of a novelty song, everyone was listening, my parents didn't listen to Rock & Roll though, just jazz so maybe a babysitter?

Can't ya See? by The Marshall Tucker Band, yes, the flute song, it deals with trains & I used to ride the train from Boston to Haverhill all the time, I grew up on the south shore of Mass but most of my Mother's family lived in Haverhill on the north shore, I would go to babysit my young cousins or see my older cousins who were nearer my own age & make a day of it, my father would drop me off at the T subway station, I'd ride to Boston, shop a little if I had any money, go to North Station & get a train to Haverhill, this song was always my companion, although because its a sad song it was more so while I'd be waiting for the train to take me back to Rockland & home after a weekend or week in Haverhill.

A lot of the songs I wrote about back in the 80s when I compiled this list I just wrote, summer of 85 or Christmas 86 (that's the pros & cons of Hitchiking by Roger Waters) I was chronicaly attatched to my walkman back then (I had 2 or 3, one or annother was always broken- the FM one was the standby & it wore like nails, I had my original sanyo walkman which I got in 1983 still working when I got divorced in 2000, that year, someone got it wet though & it had to be thrown away) I lived music, had a radio show on the local high school radio station (especially ironic since I was homeschooled & didn't actually go to school!) from the time I got up in the morning until I
was falling asleep in bed at night either the radio, the record player, tape deck or my walkman was running. Before I fell asleep at night I'd play the radio dial, as I mentioned before there's so many radio stations that you can scroll the dial & nearly every setting has annother station. I like a lot of different music & can remember going from REM's radio free Europe (back when it was their first 'hit') to Fare thee well by some hippie folk singer, maybe Carole King or Joni Mitchell? It was a very small radio station's sign off song & I'd try to tune in to listen at midnight on my walkman, it was a good song to doze off to,
'Fare thee well, my own true love,
I'm leaving the first hour of the morn
It's not the leavin' that's greivin me
But my true love that's bound to stay behind'

 I'm surprised I can still remember the lyrics, it's been about 15 years!
But that's the thing about music, it's like smell to me, it brings up memories which have been buried for years, things I'd totally forgotten about, like there's annother old folk song which has been getting some play since hurricaine Katrina, 'The City of New Orleans' by Arlo Guthrie, I have a 45 rpm record of it & play it occasionally, I was surprised when my ex came across it & got excited, he had to play it,

it turned out he'd learned the song the way I did. There's a tv station in Boston, channel 56 & they'd play that song about 10 minutes before they signed on at 6 am each day over the test pattern, we both, as kids back in the 70s would get up early & turn on the tv to this channel for cartoons (back before Nickelodeon & Disney Channel- my kids don't belive there was such a time!) & get this song instead & over the years we both (seperately) gained a love of the song!
Annother thing I remember well is that up until I had kids I didn't sleep well anywhere but my own bed on the first night somewhere & usually stayed awake all night the first night somewhere other than home (Not a big deal to me, my relationship with my mother back then was such that I'd still prefer a sleepless night somewhere else over staying at home with her!) So at Gails, or my Great Grandmothers or my Uncle's house, I'd lie in the dark, sometimes too excited about the next days events to sleep, sometimes just unable to sleep because I wasn't in my own bed, & listen to the radio on my walkman. They play strange stuff on the radio at 3 in the morning I have to say!

 I'm really looking forward to having an I-pod someday when I can afford it, I can't right now, but it certainly seems to be renewing the personal music delivery system which is what the Walkman was in it's day- & I'm all for that,  of course, I think it's a little weird to have all my own favorite songs on it rather than a radio, that's one of the things I like about radio, you're at their mercy, if there's a song you haven't heard before but they want to play it, you're hearing it!

A million Things to Do
Now Playing: Break my Rusty Cage & Run by Soundgarden
Topic: Rambling on

*Take Trash Out
*Blog
*Email Ex Re: stair costs
*Cut 10's hair
*Edit/work on pictures on hard drive
*Hook up Printer
*Laundry- Fold it too
*Wrap Leaky pipe
*Take job application to business
*Strip mr 7's bed, febreeze the whole thing
*Wash all mr 7's sheets & Blankets
*Check out Hyundais online
*Try to duplicate old pics with out scanner
*Staple insulation to ceiling in basement
*Caulk & seal basement bulkhead roof
*Pick up S at 2:25 both days
* go to town & drop off paperwork for the kid's medical insurance

Here's my long list of things that I wrote yesterday to remind myself of what I need to do around the house today & tommorow, its going on 3 pm & I haven't done a thing but this right here & take the trash out. no, now that I'm looking at the list It does say email the ex with a question about how much I should plan on it costing to have stairs put in my house (we have an attic access to the upstairs currently though the rooms up there are completely finished) as a sop to my consience I can't cut miss 10's hair until she gets home from school, I can't fold laundry until it's all dry & I'm blogging right now.
   The day started with a bang when I heard Chrissie's dog yelping & thought it had been hit by a car. I checked out Hyundais & found out they're really expensive new. Its raini ng outside off & on & so my internet is off & on, Satellite internet is cool in a lot of ways & since I work in satellite television I understand that occasional outages are going to occour due to weather. As I tell people who are horrified that their tv is not going to come back on until the weather clears, 'if you have a dvr watch recordings, if  you don't find alternate entertainment' I have no tebook here on the computer & the songs on my hard drive don't require internet connection so I'm ok.(it also keeps the kids from asking me to get off the computer so they can get on, only mr 7 has games which don't require internet connection to use)
I ran outside in my nightgown to see where she was & found her hanging by her front paw off of our hammock, she had managed to get the hammock wrapped around her paw 3 or 4 times, Chrissie's daughter had stayed home from school with a sore throat & I had to go wake her up to support the dog since she was hanging from the hammock & the dog's weight was straining the hammock too much, even with the support the hammock was wrapped so tight around her p aw I ended up cutting the hammock rather than making the dog swing by her paw any longer than I had to.  I knew the hammock was going to be over as of the end of the summer & I guess this ends it, it was a 16 dollar hammock 16 years ago when I bought it, it's a sailors type hammock, not the kind with the boards at each end to keep it flat & it already had a foot wide hole in the middle. The kids have been using it as a swing more than a hammock which was not exactly good for the hammock or the ropes suspending it but I'm only here 3 days a week, miss 16 does not police the outside, only the inside & so it was pretty hard to keep the swinging from going on.
    I Then went to town to drop off paperwork, yes, with 3 kids & only 1 income, even with the $225 a month my ex is finaly forced to send, my kids still recieve medicaid, which is a good thing because I certainly can not afford the $180 per pay period employee + 3 insurance would cost, though of course, then I'd have insurance too, I'm currently uninsured & use part of my eic tax refund every year to go see the doctor & get a pap smear & general health check up. I didn't go out sh opping in town, though I love to do so & it was a temptation, I love going looking with out the kids, it's so nice with no one to tell not to touch that, not to pick that up, don't run in the store. & I'm even nice to people who do have kids...Not having to put up with my own I have a lot more patientice with other peoples children. But its a pay week meaning that I'll be able to see how much I'm getting wednesday evening but can't touch it until Friday morning so I'm pretty broke just this minute & I hate to not be able to at least buy a little $3 or $5 trinket if I go into store & I can't do tha t today boo hoo! So back home, after a stop at the post office where there was no mail but I finaly remembered to pay for postage to send my ex's new wife pictures of him, these are embarrasing pictures, of him wearing makeup & dressed up in 'heavy metal' clothes (80's style) for the pictures. When the visited in April we all looked through the picture albums & she was quite amused by these pictures, when she said she'd like copies the Ex vetoed the idea, I told her I'd send them after he went back to Iraq & it's taken me this long to assemble the spare photos, get them in an envelope, write a quick note to wrap them in (have to strive for a friendly but not fawning or kiss-ass tone) & since I'm sending 10 or so pics I had to take them to the P.O. & pay .63 cents for postage. It'll be worth it if she puts one in the newspaper for his birthday in November though- which is what she was threatening!
   After that there wasn't much to do, (just that list I'm ignoring) so I got
 the dryer going & stripped mr 7's bed & washed all the blankets (we still have a bedwetting problem so it's at least a weekly occourence & blankets are constantly being washed) then sat down here & oh, look, it's nearly 5 pm already! we're having a baked chiken recepie that I saw on food network on a show called (I think) Good Food Fast, it's simple but they swear it tastes just like fried chicken, if it's true I'll post the recipie!

What's wrong with me?
Now Playing: New World Man by Rush
Topic: Rambling on

Why haven't I been writing?

I've been busy, not too busy, just mentally busy with school having started, work getting crazy, sick kids, plumbing problems, car running strange problems & I just haven't had anything positive to say.

I've been here, I've been putting together my vacation posts from my private blog to post them here, they won't be here on the main page but under the link for Vacation 2006. But that's not the same as writing & thinking outloud which is often what I find myself doing here.

in other news...

A coworker told me about a place which is hiring & taking a lot of people from where I work because they're starting people with call center experience at $15 an hour, that's a substatial amout more than what I'm making now. Of course, it means giving up the 5 years senority I've accrued at my current job & stepping out into the unknown, it also means more of the same in the call center environment, though I know it won't be exactly the same as what I do now, it still means talking on the phone to people who'd probably rather not be talking to me, (it's inbound sales & I do inbound tech support now, yes, they call me but only because they have to!) It's the unknown part that bothers me the most I think, the idea that I have a mortgage & a car payment & 3 kids & a cat to feed & how can I even think about taking risks with all of that riding on only me? But of course, I take a risk every time I get in the car that someone won't come around the corner & Cream me pulling out of my very driveway! I take a risk going outside cause one of the ridiculously tall trees in my yard could just fall over & squash me, or really, even in my bed, I'm in line with 2 or 3 trees which could squash me just sleeping in my bed if you really want to get right down to it so really I can't get too upset about taking risks. Or at least I can usualy talk myself down out of that one. 

Then there's this funk I've been in where I'm thinking about the past, like distant past, when I first came here to VA in 1987 & when I met 16's dad & all the time I was with him- not very long in the grand scheme of things, only 16 months, but man a LOT of living & life lessons were cram packed into that 16 months, I NEVER want annother 16 months like those particular ones. ever. again. So I've been writing about that, not in great detail yet but in enough that if I ever post it I'll have to go back & change all the names! 

I think I'm lucky to have diaries covering all those years (really, from age 11 until when I started this blog, now I never seem to write in my diary in longhand, too bad in someways, ok in others)  If I'm looking for something to write about I can always pluck one off the shelf & start reading & then make it into a story, though they rarely have any moral or reason for being, sometimes they're funny or weird coincedences will occour. Once, when my Ex & I had been married about 3 months I happened to open a diary & re-read some pretty awful things my Uncle & his Wife had said & done to & about me right after my Father died & I got a little irritated with them all over again (this was maybe 2 years after the incident occoured) My ex got really upset with me & said that this was why he didn't think people should keep diaries because it could dig up all kinds of terrible stuff that you would be happier forgetting about. I tried to make him see that I prefered to remember this sort of thing to keep me mindful to not let this particular Uncle & Aunt see everything I felt & thought & to not turn my back on them because they were more than capable of sticking a knife in it! We argued on this issue for maybe 2 hours! Funny, now, I'm sure he'd look better in retrospect if I didn't have 8 years of diaries reminding me of how unhappy I was with him- even if I never did write down how so much of what I was worried about & hoped wasn't true. Was true!

Miss 16 is sick, I left work early to take her out of school & then didn't go today to take her to the doctors, strep throat- More antibiotics.  

At least it seems 10, 7 & I have already had the particular strain she has since no one has gotten sick but her- I think we're all already imune to it. Or maybe it's hair dye poisoning! I'm sorry, I'm all for self expression but when you've got beautiful unique, red hair already why, why WHY would you want to paint it black? She looks like a redheaded zebra! & she's really thinking I'm trying to be funny when I say that! I am NOT.

10 is getting awfully fussy lately, she insists she doesn't need any more sleep than she's getting which I have my doubts about, but man, is she weepy & whiny. Of course, she is 10, I had my period at 11 so it's possible she's just going to be one of those early ones, her aunts on the ex's side were too if I remember, so that could be the problem. I need to buy stock in tampax once she's started, I'll have to go to BJ's to purchase our needs!

7 & I are wrangling with his room, he keeps trashing it & getting very angry with me for having the audacity to insist he clean up his messes before I give the tv remote back to him. I have to walk in there to get clothes out of the closet on work days & it is upsetting to: a) step on stuff I bought him for his birthday in July already in pieces on the floor, yes, they're magnetix, they were already in pieces, but those pieces HURT! b) see books which I grew up with & loved/love jammed between the bed & the wall, often with pages bent & torn- though I am glad he likes to read, so few boys seem to these days, it's all x box. Among other things, a catepillar he had in a box in his room (poked holes in the top of my LAST tupperware container!) ready to take to school the next day crawled out, affixed itself to the top of his door's carvings & became a chrysalis - which I assure you we are watching with rapt attention! 

I'm hoping to become more involved in this tommorow, I just don't have much of any drive right now, there's nothing going on just this minute that feels in need of being written about!

The End of the World as we Know it?
Now Playing: Hungry Heart by Bruce Springstein
Topic: Rambling on

Ok, so I know I'm not very political, I used to be, but after my ex left just making it through the week became my focus, I was worried much more about having enough food for the kids to eat & how we were going to keep the power & the phone on than what was going on in the wider world, I still voted in the presidential & gubenetorial (is that how you spell that?) races & I watch the nightly local & national news every night. But spending time worrying about what was going on & actualy reading newspapers was lost to me (I actualy gave up the newspaper when I moved from Mass to VA, the Roanoke paper is ok, but when you're used to the Boston Globe, well, I'm a snob!) Then there's the fact that I'm a liberal independent person & I live in a staunchly republican, conservative state. Keeping a low profile is just a good idea, but I was blog surfing (Via Micheles, I just pick a few titles on the blog roll & open them up to see what's there) & I happend on a site which had the following link on it. I didn't read too much of that blog because I got sucked into this link & never looked back:

lifeaftertheoilcrash  

go check it out, at least skim the first page, there's enough there to get you worried to say the least.

To say it was absorbing reading is an understatement, I immediately began trying to figure out what I would DO if the world collapsed like they're descibing, I live in a house with an electric stove, electric water pump & very little self sufficiency! We have a propane powered furncace but my credit wasn't good enough to lease a propane tank last year & so last winter we heated with a round kerosene heater. It actualy worked out ok, not too cold but they say the winter was unusualy mild, I thought it was the difference between the trailer we were living in & an actual insulated house.  But Kerosene is a non renewable resourse. I have to go to the store & buy it & it's made from chemicals which oil is used to process. After reading that site I have made all these mental connections about how we/I live which add up to what the hell would I do if this happen(s)ed? 

Not to mention the implicit, depressing, 'what will my kid's lives be like?' question! I talked to my 16 year old about it & she just shrugged & said 'J (current boyfriend) & I will just build a self-sufficient home off in the woods & live independently' I was hard put not to point out the multile flaws in this plan but I didn't want to depress her too much since she's pretty depressive in general & we've been arguing lately about that- How she's always depresive & moping & surly. I made a concious decision When my ex left me in 2000 that I was not going to live my life that way, that I was going to try to be as optomistic, upbeat & cheerful as possible & try to look on the bright side of everything as much as humanly possible. Which is not 'normal' in my family, my mother & all of her brothers are moody, mopey, depressive people & I have watched them all drag through their lives & I don't want to live like that! (the st. Johnswort helps this too!- but I couldn't take it while with the ex because it can interfere with birth contol pills they say) So she's going exactly the same way I was & my mother & uncles are & I'm trying to give her the mental tools to help combat it - it's not all herbal, you have to choose to look at things as positively as possible too...

Anyway, I'm just floored by this article & am actually considering a change in jobs to eliminate my 50+ mile round trip commute. (I want to telecommute but all the stuff I'm finding looks like scams) & there's the length of service thing to consider, I've been at my job for over 5 years & make more than any starting wage job is going to give me- especialy in this area! Rural areas, while better suited for a 'back to the land approach' are not too great for working outside the home for cash to pay the taxes & the mortgage type thing!

Enough of this depressing stuff, I'm off from work & relaxing at home with out any kids, it's been lovely except I slept too late & too long & have a headache. I have a half an hour left before they're back home & I have already done 2 loads of laundry, put away 2 baskets of clean clothes which I folded last night & done a ton of dishes (how we end up with so many dishes AFTER dinner dishes are done I'll never understand) Now I'm thinking about a snooze/book read in my hammock because the calendar & the weather don't know or care that school is back in session!

Site of the day! really?
Topic: Rambling on

I am so thrilled that I was Michele's site of the day!

 Thank you so much Michele! I'm really flattered, I don't get as much time to write as many people do & so I never expected to have anyone important take any notice     

 (the mentions of Micheles should be links, I know this, However, Tripod does not allow links currently, or maybe it's my computer! anyway, cut & paste this & go see Michele!)  http://micheleagnew.com/

 

In other news, I did all my Mandatory Overtime today & am annoyed because, of course, I have to do it again next week, 4 hours every week, I usualy try to do it while I'm already there but the past week I couldn't bear the thought, at 8 pm, that I needed to stay annother 1 or 2 hours to make up my overtime & so since they were offering for daytime (which is rare) I took the offer & worked today instead. It wasn't that bad really, except for driving all that way there & back again & the sneaking feeling that I should be at home with the kids because they're going back to school tommorow.... Oh well, Saturdays coming up after all, we can be at each other's throats then! 

Random Musings
Now Playing: No Excuses by Alice in Chains
Topic: Rambling on
Man I'm telling you, when I get the credit card un-maxed & complete the school shopping (that second one will be before the first!) The firt thing I'm going to get is a scanner, I've wanted one for awhile, but a monitor was a bigger need, For the moment I have Chrissies monitor & when she moves (it's looking like soon now) I have an old one my mother gave me from her computer which died this year (miss 16 moved heaven & earth to fit both that & the little computer my uncle let me have for miss 16 into the car on the trip home from vacation this year) So the monitor is taken care of & we also have 2 printers, 1 with ink & 1 with out so all I really need is a scanner, the reason I want a scanner is that I want to post pictures from the past on here. You see I had a stack of pictures about 2 inches thick on my shelf, all loose pictures which the kids have used for timelines at school or taken out to show someone somewhere, & have been accumulating on the shelf for most of the last year & today I put them in order & put them back in my albums. So I'm enthused with the idea of putting some of them online eventually back when I was'nt just a ball of flesh & actually had a waist (well, that hasn't been for quite a few years- but I did have one once!) & then there's the kids as babies pictures, I look at them & can't belive they ever were such little, tiny, dependent creatures who smiled all the time & cried when they were hungry instead of angry at me because I won't let them do exactly what they want at all times! I Don't really need a scanner after all, it's an extra which I can think of a thousand uses for though (at least, when I'm not sitting here trying to justify getting one)

I don't know what to do on the changing the blog thing, I've started a new one, But I have some of the same problems there, no linking enabled & sometimes slow to load But there is spell check which they seem to have done away with here & which I need desperately. I admit, a lot of the problems I didn't like on tripod are seeming to smooth out now, a few weeks later.

The back to school thing is getting me down in some ways, I'm pretty much all set with the little ones, Miss 16 has been away all week & is coming home tonight so I have to get her stuff all ready still. & She's the hardest to shop for, some classes she won't even know what she needs until after school begins (a good thing, since I get paid on the 18th which is the day after school begins) I always miss the kids when they're in school but then on the other hand I like the quiet time in the mornings on Tuesdays & Wednesdays while they're at school too. Then it really feels like Saturday is annother work day between getting grocery shopping done every 2 weeks & just generaly getting stuff done with & for the kids on the Saturday I don't get paid on! Miss 16 always pesters me to come home during her day too which I hate, I know she's the type who does not need to be there & have stuff drilled into her head multiple times & leaving school about every other week last year did not hurt her grades in the least. It's just the premise of the thing.

What I've Been Doing while not Blogging
Now Playing: Voodoo by Godsmack
Topic: Rambling on

Its hard getting back in the swing of things after being on vacation, it's even odder when barely a week after getting home you're off again. Tuesday of this week we drove to Kentucky to take miss 16 to a friends for a week (you can read about it at: chrisseas-corner.tripod.com/ I have no real impressions of the trip other than I was tired at the beginning & even more tired afterwards! I was also frustrated that I had to spend a whole day driving when my house was a mess & I wanted to be picking up & getting things straightened out.... Of course I only seem to itch to clean up when I can't do it, by Wednesday I was not interested in cleaning anymore & just wanted to have fun. After doing a little picking up & some orginization of laundry (In a house with 6 people the laundry comes FIRST no matter what) We went swimming (it was 99 degrees easily & no breeze in sight, we had to do something!) after a stop at a friends to pick up some clothes for miss 10 who is growing by leaps & bounds this summer (especially in the mouth department!) Thanks again Jody for the clothes! 

Then it was off to the river, it's not the usual place we go but a place with a couple of little waterfalls & a deep pool. On the way in we surprised a snake which jumped out of the stone wall & into the water (it was only about 2 feet long, not a big one or anything) We were also a little grossed out because on the rocks in the waterfall there were these little black worm looking things which almost looked like leeches but were too small & were attatched to the rocks on the waterfall which meant they were in the running water & also in the bright sunlight, (leeches are usualy in stagnant water & especially in darker places like under overhanging trees! Yes, I'm speaking from personal experience here!)  & there was water plants also growing over the rocks which made them not as good for sliding down as they used to be (I'm told,  The last time I was there I was pregnant with my 7 year old & did not go sliding at that time) but we had fun! we stayed about 3 hours, there's a sandy area & rocks which are just barely submerged to sit on (if you don't mind a certain slimy feeling)  

The kids had a great time running around, swimming & playing monkey in the middle with a ball. Chrissie & I sat around in the water watching the kids & talking, watching for some shy crawfish to come out, they were under a rock right next to where we were sitting & kept peeking out at us, when we'd lean over to look at them they'd immediately shoot back under the rock. When the sun had left the area (most of the pictures are so light struck from the sun hitting the area hard, they were unusable) we did too... while it was still in the mid 90's in the air, the water which is coming right off the mountains was too cold to stay in with out the sun right on us! 

  I had a roast ready to cook at home on the grille but it was so late (730) already that I didn't want to go home & cook it so we picked up pizza (thank heavens for credit cards!) & went home, after a trip to the garden (the cucumbers are running my life these days- I just wish the tomatos would turn red!) & some more laundry & dishes it was off to bed to go back to the grind!

My grind, I admit is less than most peoples, only 2 10 hour days (well, 1 was really 12 hours, love that mandatory overtime!- NOT) & then annother day off, which brings me up to today- grocery shopping & school preparation shopping, (this is VA's tax free weekend for school shopping & so its likely to be a zoo in the stores) 

Chrissie said it best...Why I'm Shopping for a New Blog Place
Now Playing: Rock on by David Essex
Topic: Rambling on

"If it Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It" see: http://chrisseascorner.tripod.com

I don't know who said it first, but it is true. Especially since I had no complaints about tripod at all before they started changing things, I'm not much of a complainer, I put up with a lot before I get upset. But continued changes, (Now they've taken my spell check away & I had only just begun using it too!) Most of them seem to be things I've seen on other blogs, like misstatements cross outs which are ok in some ways but why take away spell check? & why doesn't mozilla support my cutting & pasting out of notebook on to my draft entry in tripod? No linking? why? it's all grayed out & I know others are having the same problem!

Suffice it to say I'm shopping for a new place. The real problem is I can't see what they're like with out getting a blog on them, there's no try it out section, only a bunch of verbage 'selling' you on the site. So I'm going to try out Wordpress, mostly because someone I really like & respect's blog is on there.  I admit though, that I have a lot of reservations, there are a lot of things I like about tripod- mostly that I've figured out how to use most everything on it, even remote posts! I hate to give it up, plus I have a public (this one) & a private blog on tripod- am I going to give both up & change both over? or only this one which I use more. The one I just started is only 1, I'm not sure if I should move everything from here over there or start anew over there. It doesn't seem right to just abandon all I've written here after all....

Of course I'm not a particularly decisive person, my oldest waited almost 24 hours with out a name & so did my youngest! I can't even decide what color to make my trial blog over there on wordpress- 

I haven't decided for sure either, I may just stick with it over here, there are certainly things to be said for this place, pictures already archived etc....  we shall see. probably the best thing I could do is write a note to tripod- if everyone who's on here & does not like the changes (& that's everyone I know who uses tripod) writes they'd have to do something right? 

Three Down, 2 more to Go!
Now Playing: Hate Me by Blue October.
Topic: Rambling on
I'm referring to Days I have left to work before we leave, I'm pretty exhausted from working on a day I usually work in order to make up for missing Thursday next week as I'll already be in Mass on Thursday.
Well, I cheated really, I was supposed to work 5 10 hour days in a row & yesterday I went home sick halfway through the day, yes, I was sick, sick of the verbal abuse which is heaped upon me my people who are way too involved with their televisions! Sick of trying & trying to deal with a computer program which is cumbersome, confusing & just generally inconvenient & sick of dealing with a supervisor who doesn't really care & just wants to get out of there as much as I do! (no, really I had diarrhea, no one needs to know that I have diarrhea every day because I'm lactose intolerant & drink a slim fast type milkshake (I say type- it's from a health food store, much better than slim fast) every morning & I don't always choose to notice the diarrhea.
So I played hooky & went looking for some clothes at goodwill again, they had a bunch more than last time but none of them fit me (& there were no dresses, I prefer dresses in the summer) I went to the bookstore & overspent bigtime. It all started with being in the childrens section & seeing a display of books for travel, as in maps & word seeks & puzzles etc. so I picked up one for each of the little ones, 16 sulks if I get them something & don't bring her anything so I got her a book by her current favorite author (Scott Westerfield- I read his latest trilogy at her insistence & found it pretty entertaining-) & of course, I can't just get books for the kids, Mom needs something too! so I got a replacement for a book I've read to rags (& because it's in rags I haven't read it in probably 10 years either- so I'm looking forward to reading it again.)it is Linda Goodmans Star Signs, & a new book by Douglas Coupland who I read religiously, if he has a new book I read it, I don't always like it (I thought Generation X, his alleged masterpiece- was boring & Girlfriend in a Coma which was panned is my favorite by him- so far! Eleanor Rigby Looks pretty good!) But I always read his books.
I'm picking up interference here, people are screaming at one another that 1 is 'kicking my toes' how you kick only the toes I can't imagine, the dog is barking loudly from the front yard too... Oh my, I'm more deaf than I thought; he said she was 'taking my toast!' Life if rough when you have only a 2 slot toaster! I can already tell that there's going to be a lot of yelling in a few minutes when I announce that everyone has to sleep in their own bed tonight & that no one is sleeping on the couch. I'm a mean, mean Mom. Just because I want a nights peace to watch the news in where no one is saying 'aren't you done yet?, Can't we watch something instead of the news?'
I expect this to be the last entry before we go on Vacation. (other than the memes I've pre-posted for next week while we're away)& I hope anyone & everyone reading this has as much fun as I hope to between now & July 26th when we get home!

What we're doing
Now Playing: 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins
Topic: Rambling on

Tonight we went raspberry picking, I would have liked to take a few pictures but the slope the berries are on is so steep I wouldn't chance my car keys or my camera phone near it! The kids however, well that's another story! We picked as many as we could safely reach, Mr 6 suggested we bring a rope back & lower him on it, I pointed out that if we had to drag him back the prickers on the berry vines would be a little painful to be dragged over & he concurred, he always is more agreeable if I act like I would let him carry out his ideas except for what ever I think of as a snag. Until this year I wouldn't let anyone but miss 16 go near the berry bushes, due to the steep slope & the fact that 16's friend who lives about a mile away told us a few years ago that bears had been seen there multiple times & that right in the middle of the berry bushes is a hole it's a large hole & has gotten larger in the 9 years we've been going there, a couple of times we've seen animal carcasses outside of the hole, mostly just deer & squirrel pieces but anything that's taking down deer is something I don't want to meet, due to that & the possibility of snakes we are always sure to talk very loudly while we're there. Came home & sat down & 5 hours later I'm still here (I had a whole entry all written & the computer crashed)
It could be worse, I could have to work on the 4th of July, I'm off for once, out of the 6 paid holidays I get I usually work at least 3 of them, it all depends on what day the holiday is & if your regular schedule has you off that day or not. I'm off & fully intend to have as much fun as possible with 3 kids one of whom is usually sulking about something & when she's not she's on the phone! We're going to have Shish Kebabs (recipe to follow) & Rice Pilaf for dinner on the 4th & light sparklers & morning glories & have a bonfire with all the sticks & branches which have come down over the year (last bonfire= last 4th of July)I'm seriously considering not going to the town fireworks event, every year but last year we've been in Mass for the 4th & I nearly died of embarrassment last year when miss 10 said (loudly, I might add) 'is that it? that's all we get?' last year when the fireworks display was over. Of course, in her recent memory we've been in Mass either watching the Boston Fireworks from Hull or in the city of Haverhill right near where they shoot them off. either way they're bigger & longer & she was quite disappointed, I understand why but she didn't need to be so loud about it!
In other news We're in the throes of the Vacation planning, we leave a week from Monday & we're, as always trying to plan what to do while we're there, of course there's the really important things like seeing the family & friends, but we always do things while we're there, I try not to drive the kids nuts with going from place to historical place (historical in MY life at least!) & we've got a sort of tradition of going to a museum or historical site with my mother, we've done Plimouth Plantation & the Mayflower, The Boston Childrens Museum & the Museum of Science, (my favorite as a kid & Mr 6's too, but of course he barely remembers the first 2, he was 3 & 4 those years)This year the plan is for us to go to the salem witch museum & we're Thinking about a trip to the ">Salem Witch Museum & maybe going to the White Mountains of New Hampshire ">The White Mountains of New Hampshire with ">Ann
Who I can't wait to see!
When discussing this with the kids on Wednesday during our patio lunch I heard all the favorites from other years, ">Quincy Market & Both Hampton Beach Hampton Beach NH & ">Nantasket Beach Mass. Mr 6 suggested a repeat visit to ">Edaville RR for another day out with Thomas. His sisters loudly vetoed this idea & I can't say I disagree with them, it was fun to see his excitement when he was 5. Now it seems, since he'll be 7 on the 14th that he'd be about ready to give up the Thomas thing.
(I suppose it's better than the alternate Spiderman & Batman obsession he's developing- at least less violent- but those are more understandable to me, as a generation x'er I can remember back when the only channels we had came from the antenna & those few were not always showing what we wanted to watch. A cartoon was a cartoon even if it was Spiderman & the 60's live action Batman show while campy by todays standards was actually pretty entertaining! I can totally get behind Spidey & the Caped crusader to this day!)
We'll see how the whole trip turns out, usually I waste reams of paper (recycled from work, 1 side full of work stuff) writing out itineraries for us. Then when we go other than a loose guide of where we wanted to go we don't follow it at all. This year I'm just listing places & people to visit & not really putting down when, the only guideline is my Grandmother's first & my Mother's last. in between those the whole trip is an empty page!


So here it is, the best Shish Kabob recipe in the universe, my ex used to try to improve upon it but it can't be done!
the night before you want to serve them mix:
1 & 1/2 cups of white wine,
1 & 1/2 cups of cooking oil,
4 cloves of garlic chopped, (remember the bigger the chunks the milder the flavor, also I really do use more garlic but my family likes garlic a lot)
2 teaspoons of salt
1/2 t pepper.
then add:
1 & 1/2 pounds of cube steak, or cut a good thick steak into 1 & 1/2 inch cubes.
cover & marinate until ready to assemble,
while the regular method with all the stuff you're cooking all shoved onto the skewer in alternating pieces looks really nice everything cooks better if you make meat skewers & vegetable skewers. This is just my personal opinion though.
Grille the meat with mushrooms, onion chunks, green peppers & cherry tomatoes over what ever kind of grill you have until meat is done to taste & veggies are tasty. I've always served this with rice pilaf & a salad.