What is this thing they call “free time”?

The “thing” I alluded to a couple of weeks ago that would likely take what remaining free time I have left has panned out can now be announced…..drumroll….

I’m going back to school.

Not just any old school -  I’m going back for an MBA.  I learned last week that I was accepted to the program and will start my first class later this months.  In 2.5 years, taking one class at a time, I’ll have a full-fledged, honest-to-goodness MBA. 

And then what? 

Good question…

Hives and cuts and backaches, oh my!

It was another non-stop week of medical maladies in this household.

MONDAY – Mom still has hives.  They started Thursday and they ITCH! 

TUESDAY – Mom still has hives, gives in and goes to the doctor for a dandy steroid shot and a another 6 day prescription…because I’m not already enough of walking pharmaceutical cocktail.  My regular doctor was out of the office so I got to see Dr. I’m-Still-In-Diapers.  Seriously, I think this guy walked straight off of the medical school graduation podium and into the exam room.  Don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against young doctors – the kids’ pediatrician is in his early 30s and he’s great.  The guy I saw, however, not so great.  He was mumbling to himself while writing in my chart, things like “Hmm….let’s see…I’ll write ‘Patient presents with hives that itch.’ “  Not exactly the confidence inspiring prose I want from my medical professional.  The true gem was his assault at the end of the appointment.  With one foot out the door, he said “When was the last time you’ve had a full physical with blood tests for cholesterol and sugar?”.  I explained that I had had blood tests done in August, all with good results.  Apparently he didn’t hear me because he said “Well, fast for 10 hours before you follow-up appointment next week and we’ll draw blood for the tests.” and out the door he went.  I made the follow-up appointment because I was told to, but after further consideration I cancelled it.  My hives are gone.  My blood is fine.  I don’t like that doctor.  I’m not going back to him.  When and if I decide to have more blood tests, I’ll work with someone I have confidence in.

WEDNESDAY – Katey woke up with hives.  Not the little bug bite looking hives…not our Katey…she went all out with giant “take over your whole body” hives.  A dose of Benadryl, hives disappeared, off to daycare. Whew…  Another hive breakout in the evening but they were sufficiently cured with Benadryl as well.

Alex had a school project due on Friday for which I was cutting styrofoam to simulate earthquake damage.  In the process, I managed to slice nearly all they way through the tip of my finger with a serrated knife.  Much blood and deliberation later, I decided to forgo an E.R. visit and self medicate with liquid band-aid and Tylenol.  Going to the hospital would have impeded the progress of said earthquake which was due on Friday.

THURSDAY – Katey woke up with the mother of all hives cases.  I took her to the doctor.  Given her history of allergies, I thought it prudent to have this documented…and also because they were scary big this time.  The diagnosis was “giant hives” (which has a medical name that escapes me) treated with Benadryl and a 5-day dose of steroids.  On a side note, the doc said the steroids would also help to clear up her lungs, which were going down the path of almost causing wheezing again.  2 birds, one stone.

FRIDAY – My hives are finally gone.  Katey’s are still raging through the morning and afternoon.  They seemed to have disappeared by evening and have not yet resurfaced.

SATURDAY – Pleasant, uncomplicated, quiet.

SUNDAY – William developed a severe back ache to the point that he was screaming in pain.  There was no fever or “hot spot” that would point to a kidney infection or appendicitis and it seemed to go away with regular intervals of Tylenol and Motrin.  I could tell when the meds wore off, though, because the screaming returned in earnest.  I decided that if he was still in pain on Monday morning, we’d go to the doctor.

MONDAY – No hives.  Fingertip still attached. No screaming back ache.  We survived!! 

In retrospect, we probably should have taken William to the doctor to have his back ache checked out.  Can an almost 5 yr old get kidney stones?  My internet research leads me to think this might explain it.  However, in the very wise words of an E.R. doctor I saw way too many times last fall, “the two worst outcomes from the advent of the internet age are porn and medical misdiagnosis”.  I really need to learn back away from my keyboard at times and leave some thing up to the professionals.

Ahhh…Quiet Monday…

We had one of those crazy busy weekends that makes Monday actualy enjoyable.  Last Wednesday through Sunday was the town’s annual “Corn Festival”.  I have never seen a town get so wrapped up in an event like this one does about the ‘fest.  Little by little, we’ve been getting drug further and further into the chaos, especially as the kids get bigger.

We initiated this year’s fest on Wednesday with a trip downtown to watch the firefighters water fights.  Basically, there are two teams of firefighters going head to head, directing their hose to spray a barrel suspended between them.  The team that sprays the barrel to the opposing team’s side is the winner.  This went on for a long time as there were a lot of teams and it was a best of 3 situation for each pairing.  It’s good entertainment for a while but after an hour or so, one needs a diversion.

Thankfully, there were ample people watching opportunities to spice up the evening.  I think bets were being taken on how many firefighters/EMT’s would be called when the (likely intoxicated) apartment dwellers two stories up decided to sit in their windows with their feet dangling outside to watch the event.  And then there were the kids playing in the water, splashing everyone around without a care in the world…or a parent to tell them to knock it off.  Just good, old fashioned, irresponsible fun.

When we got bored of the waterfights, we were off to walk the main downtown street, which is closed off to traffic during the fest.  We were in search of a corndog…William’s bribe reward for being good at daycare.  En route, we met up with some friends and ended up staying much later than we had anticipated.  The kids were predictably exhausted Thursday morning…and William earned no reward for good behavior at daycare that day.

On Saturday, we made our way downtown bright and early so Alex and a friend could sign up to do the kiddie waterfights (just like firefighter waterfights only with kids and garden hoses).  Again, lots of great fun but watching for 2+ hours is not so exciting.  Thankfully, there was a petting zoo plenty of food vendors within walking distance.  We tried to get home in time for the kids to take a nap before attending a neighbor’s Corn Fest party Saturday night.  Actually, we were home in time…but the kids didn’t cooperate with the whole nap thing.  Ugh…

The party was a great time, complete with hay rides and a pig roast, although I do belive the man-eating mosquitos had the best buffet.  Not even the bug spray could deter them!  We left around 11 pm when the kids went into total and complete meltdown mode. 

The oldest boys and I went to church on Sunday morning while Mike stayed home with the tired younger two.  William ended up sleeping until 11:30 am!  We were off to the carnival for an hour of ride riding before the parade. The kids really enjoyed the rides but my bank account did not so much enjoy the $60 it took to buy them all wristbands. 

The parade started at 2pm.  Alex, Aiden and Mike all walked in it with their Cub Scout group.  William, Katey and I enjoyed it from the sidelines.  Well…enjoyed the first hour of it anway, until the lack of sleep and decent food caught up with them.  We somehow managed to sit through the second hour of the parade without too many crying fits.  Yes, you read that right, the parade was a whopping 2 hours long.  I think the festival fathers need to learn the great mantra “everything in moderation”.  They could have eliminated all of the politicians and the Shriners in their tiny cars and shortened up the parade quite nicely.  (More on the Shriners and their cars in another post.)

We drug the kids kicking and screaming past the carnival and back to the car for a loud, whine filled drive home where we made a desparation dinner of tuna casserole and peas.  Then all 6 of us crashed in the living room and watched TV.  We sent the kids off to bed at 7:30 without so much as a complaint from them…and spent the rest of the night doing absoultely nothing.  It was a beautiful Sunday evening!

So, this quiet Monday is much appreciated.  It’s the calm before the storm, I fear.  This is going to be another busy week.  But aren’t the all, anymore?  You would think I’d begin to accept chaos as the norm, but I just can’t.  One of these days, life will get back to normal.  I hope I recognize it when it does.

I’m Alive!

Believe me, that is something to cheer about these days! I’m finally on the tail end of a bad strech of something that started with strep throat early this month and progressed into a bronchitis type illness that just will not leave. A shot of penicillin and a 10 day does of a different antibiotic later, I still have a cough but almost feel human again.

Ok, so that takes care of my September absence. I have no excuse for July and August, other than life was predictably chaotic. Now that the kids are settled back in school and I can get back to web surfing….er….working in peace during the day, I might find a minute or two to keep up the blog.

Maybe.

If I can find time between PTO stuff, Cub Scout stuff, Ducks Unlimited stuff (really, don’t ask), purse business stuff, kid stuff, and, oh yeah, my real pay-the-bills job, I might just have time to post.  But I’ve gone and done this crazy thing that’s just might eat up whatever spare time I have left.  I’ll leave you hanging on that one until next week when I should know for sure…

(And by “you” I obviously mean the Google search bot, which seems to be the only thing reading my blog these days.  Gee…could that have anything at all to do with my inability to post with any regularity?  Hmm…)

Blueberry Season Has (Almost) Begun

I checked out the website of my favorite blueberry patch today and was rewarded with seeing that the patch will be open for picking on Monday!  The boys and I have been going blueberry picking for at least 5 years and quite possibly more.  They are amazingly good blueberry pickers, however last year they found the not-quite-hidden-enough patch of blackberries at the blueberry farm and proceeded to eat with abandon until I realized where they were and reigned them in.  I’ll try to keep better tabs on them this year but I’ve already heard them talking about finding that blackberry patch back.

The blueberries are $1.75 per pound when we pick them at the blueberry patch and we usually end up with 10-15 pounds.  We spend a few day gorging on fresh blueberries, a few more days gorging on baked blueberry goodness and then freeze the rest to enjoy for the rest of the year in pancakes, cereal, oatmeal, cakes and any other random blueberry recipe I can find. 

The broken stove is going to be an issue this year.  I’ve been salivating over the though of fresh blueberry buckle for weeks now and will be sorely disappointed if the oven isn’t fixed before the berries have to be frozen. I’ve ordered a replacement heating element and am anxiously awaiting its arrival.  I’m overly optimistic that it will actually work when it’s installed.  Our luck never runs so good, unfortunately.

Flickr Mosaic

Idea lifted from Are We There Yet? 2. Thanks!

1. Sawyer Glacier, Tracy Arm, AK, 2. Homemade Macaroni and Cheese, 3. Neoga High School, 4. The red one, 5. Shawn Christian Basketball 08b, 6. Icy Coke, 7. Dunguaire Castle, 8. SWEETIE PIE, 9. Truly Rich, 10. bless from above, 11. 44 / 52: In search of forever…, 12. Suburbia | Stacked in Suburbia

Make your own Flickr Mosaic:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s Flickr Toys: Mosaic Maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you attend?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

Enjoy!

This Old House

My neighbor stopped me on Monday as I was going to Alex’s baseball game.  He started his conversation with “Hi there.  We were just talking about you guys.” 

This statement always strikes fear in my heart.  I assume the worst.  I just knew he was going to be a little angry that we haven’t mowed the grass around the mailbox all year … or maybe he didn’t particularly care for the beautiful assortment of weeds populating the big planters by said mailbox.  There are only three houses on our road and we most certainly don’t get an award for yard maintenance.  (See this post for proof.)  In our defense, our “driveway” is 1/2 mile long.  It takes enough effort to keep the grass around the house mowed.  Mowing down the 1/2 mile, around the mailbox and planters and then back up the 1/2 mile is more effort than we can put out on a weekly basis.

The look of horror and/or embarrassment on my face must have given away my fear/guilt because he quickly got to the reason for their conversation.  They had been researching the history of their house at the local library and came across a book that listed our house as one of the oldest in this particular township.  It included a picture and a notation that our house was built in 1855!

The house was gutted and completely remodeled around 10 years ago.  The only thing left that is original to the house is the banister and staircase.  I have been in awe at times over the last few days as I walk up and down the stairs.  I wonder how many families have lived in our house.  How many little hands and feet have pattered up and down those stairs?  How many babies have been birthed here?  How many grandparents have sat out on the large porches watching their grandchildren play?

I have wanted to research the history of our house since we bought it almost 5 years ago.  This new discovery has really motivated me to take on this project.  Now that I have a starting point, the task isn’t nearly so overwhelming as I initially thought.

Appliance Mutiny

It seems that once a year, the appliances in my house decide to mutiny.  They have chosen this week.

My router died on Monday.  Not a good thing when I work from home and need my computers to do my job.

On Tuesday, I was making a pan of brownies when I noticed an odd glow from the oven.  The heating element/coil/hot thing on the bottom of the oven was glowing and sparking in one spot.  Even after turning off the oven, the light show continued and eventually burnt completely through a piece of the (whatever that thing is that gets hot).  I’m on a mad internet hunt for a replacement part.  We have a house full of relatives this week and not being able to use the oven ranks high in the near-catastrophe column.

Today, Wednesday, I was doing a load of laundry and the washer decided to act up again.  This is a sporadic problem so not entirely new this week.  The door (front-loading washer) doesn’t latch … or maybe it does latch but the washer just doesn’t think it’s latched … so the washer won’t start.  We have had the repair person here to fix the issue while the washer was still under warranty.  His “fix” was warrantied for 60 days.  On the 64th day, the problem reoccurred.  This time we ordered the supposedly faulty part from Sears Parts Direct and Mike replaced it .  It worked for a while and then began acting up again. 

Finally, we discovered that if the washer doesn’t lock, we just have to lift up the front of the washer slightly and then drop it.  Viola!  The door lock clicks and the laundry begins washing.  This is such a redneck fix but it is the only thing we’ve found that actually works.  Although I don’t think this is necessarily any more redneck than the first time the issue occurred and Mike broke the lock mechanism in his attempt to fix the problem.  His interim fix was to affix a neon orange ratchet strap around the washer to keep the door closed during the wash cycle.  Yes … that was definitely more redneck.

Hola! Bonjour! Salut! Zdravo!

I registered at www.postcrossing.com. It’s a site that helps you swap postcards with people across the world.  I have high hopes that this will be a great summer geography lesson for the kids.  We’ll put up a world map on the wall, mark in one color the countries we receive from and another color the countries we send to.  We’ll look up the country on the internet and maybe even learn to say “hello” in their native language.  And we will do all of this with no whining or fussing or fighting over who got to put the dot last time and who’s turn it is to put the dot this time.  Yes, it will be a summer learning experience we will all enjoy!

Or it will follow a more realistic path of being really cool for the first three or four postcards and then quickly spiral into a tantrum laden episode of “Hey Mommy!  Isn’t it my turn this time?  Tell him it’s MY TURN!!! He did it last time!  I know he did!  Hey Mommy!!!”.  And all of that fun will last until Mike bellows ”If you don’t do something with all of these postcards, I’m going to throw them in the trash!”.

I think if I were a teacher and didn’t actually have to live with my kids and referee these arguments, this might be a really cool classroom project.  In any event, we have received our first 5 addresses to send postcards to.  Our mission tomorrow morning is to find postcards with some local flair to send off.  Oh my, I didn’t even consider the fun family bonding experience we’ll all have with a Saturday morning field trip to both the store that (I hope) sells postcards and also the post office to buy the postage for these internationally bound gems.  Gosh I’m glad I found that website.

On a very loosely related tangent, I’m also a member at www.paperbackswap.com and have been thoroughly enjoying it!  I’m a book addict and this is helping me resist the urge to buy the latest release every time I go to Wal-Mart or Target.  I also really love it because I’m able to swap audio books, too.    I just wish that people wanted my books as much as I want theirs.  I have boxes and stacks sitting here, staring at me every day, begging for me to send them off to someone.  Oh wait … no, that’s not the books … it’s Mike begging me to get rid of them!

Me (collector) + Him (purger) = Disharmony

Who knew there was a house behind all those bushes?

I have been sitting in my home office all day listening to the sounds of the landscapers hard at work rediscovering our once beautiful landscaping.  My feelings alternate between joy in the realization that soon the overgrown mess we used to call landscaping will, indeed, be true beautiful landscaping and then panic that tomorrow afternoon when they’re finished I will have to write a check for an amount that I am too embarassed to mention to pay for this revitalization.

In defense of the landscaper, he and his team are doing a great job and likely well worth the amount they’re charging.  However, I hate to write that check for something that I feel we could have done ourselves.  I know it would have taken us all summer and innumerable arguments to get through it ourselves … hmm … well maybe two days of hard work on their part is worth it after all.

We bought our home in November.  I had no idea what the landscaping would look like given that it was nearly winter.  When the spring came and the bushes and flowers bloomed, I was in awe of the beauty in our yard.  As it progresses into summer and then fall, I continued to be amazed at the thought that went into the landscape design.  It seemed as soon as one flower died, another bloomed.

This beauty lasted for about two years.  It did get a bit overgrown, but Mike bought an electric hedge trimmer and kept most of the bushes trimmed.  Until he somehow managed to cut the cord of the hedge trimmer with the hedge trimmer itself.  That initiated the “wild, overgrown bushes” look.

We weeded … sometimes … and it looked nice when we did.  Apparently Mike got tired of weeding because he had the grand idea of spraying weed killer on most of the planting beds to kill the weeds.  Why he thought the flowers would live through an overabundant shower of weed killer, I have no idea.  We lost the irises, some roses and some other beautiful flowers that I cannot even begin to name.  The weeds, however, were not deterred.

There were other landscaping mishaps along the way but these were the two big ones that led us to the OMG-its-going-to-cost-us-HOW-much?!?! date with the landscaper this week.  Mr. Landscaper assured me that we could have the bushes and plants maintained twice a year for about one sixth of the cost of this current affair and then we’d never get ourselves into this situation again.  I think maybe I should just keep the weed killer away from my husband … and invest in a gas powered hedge trimmer.