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An · Open · Book
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I've had the house completely to myself this evening. I can't remember the last time I was completely by myself for an entire night. GB is off on an overnight buisness trip and Bo is spending the night with his grandparents. I spent an hour at the library just browsing the racks, ate dinner, took the dog for a walk, watched TV and played on the computer. All without the guilt of ignoring my husband or a three year old trying to "help". When we were scheduling Bo's overnight Sunday morning, GB mentioned that I might be lonely with no one at home. Yeah, right. :) |
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I was beat in Wii bowling by my 3 1/2 year old son. And not just beat, but pretty much crushed. I bowled 105. Bo, on the other hand, had a career high of 215. This is definitely a low in my video gaming career. |
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So last week our 2002 Honda Accord was in the shop for a new transmission to the tune of $3500. We went ahead and got it fixed mainly because we haven’t had any other trouble with the car and $3500 is still a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a new car—particularly since we still have four years to pay on our mini-van. Which would all be well and good, except I don’t think the car is fixed. It’s still shimmying when shifting from reverse into drive. Which means it has to go back to Aamco. Which means we will be a one car family for as long as it takes to have it fixed again. At least this time we won’t have to pay.
Sometimes I really hate cars. |
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What a day. GB went to bed last night with a bad headache and woke up with an even worse one. We thought it might be a migraine, although neither he nor I have ever had one before, so we were basing our diagnosis on second hand knowledge. But since he could barely move this morning, I was on my own to get Ty and I out of the house. I never realized how much GB does in the morning. I’m actually feeling a bit guilty. I barely made it out of the house with my lunch and that was 15 minutes later than normal. How do people do this on a regular basis? And what the heck are we going to do when we have four people to get out of this house in the morning? (And no, this is not an announcement of any kind.) GB headed to the doctor’s office and was told that it wasn’t a migraine, but rather a viral infection. He was given a shot of a high dose anti-inflammatory and was doing much, much better after an hour or so. He has been banned from our day care this week as she is leaving for vacation on Friday and wants nothing to do with any germs. I’m only allowed in the door myself. :) But here’s hoping modern medicine kicks in and he’s back on his feet tomorrow and that I manage to avoid the thing all together. |
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So apparently, on September 5, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) roundandround2 sent me a nudge to get me back to journaling. Of course it might have been a tad more effective if the nudge hadn’t ended up in my in-box, but hey, I’m posting, so I guess it did its job. Thanks, D! I probably don’t have any friends left watching my journal, but in case I do, here’s a brief update. Bo has glasses now, he’s had them since the end of March. He’s just the cutest thing in them. Everyone is telling me that he reminds them of the kid from Jerry Maguire and I can’t deny the similarity. A lot of it comes from his constant chatter, though. He had been crossing his left eye quite a bit while focusing on things, so off to the eye doctor we went. Turns out the kid in far sighted. Which is a little odd considering EVERYONE in our family is nearsighted. The big downer in this situation is that we didn’t include him on our vision insurance. Who plans on taking their 3 year old to the eye doctor? So he got the cheap frames this time around. He's already broken them once, so thank goodness for warranties. I was worried about how in the world we were going to keep glasses on him, but he actually has given us no problems. I like to think of him as my own little Harry Potter. Summer was nice. I became an aunt in June which is exciting. GB’s brother and his wife welcomed their first born, a little boy, into the world three weeks ahead of schedule. He ended up spending about five days in the NICU, but we joked that Luke was the healthiest baby there. He’s now almost three months old and on his way to becoming quite the chunk. He’s way outpaced where Bo was at three months. August was my month of travelling. A day trip up to Chicago, a long weekend in Door County, Wisconsin with roundandround2 and her kids, and a vacation in the Smoky Mountains with friends (while I wasn’t overly impressed with either Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge themselves, the mountains were beautiful and I can’t wait to go back), and an extended family trip to a lake in northern Indiana. I am glad to be home and am looking for to a day without anything to do. I was planning on using the day to take out all of my dead summer flowers and plant my fall mums, but the forecast calls for rain all day. I guess that means that I’m going to have to stay in bed and lounge around the house. Darn it. :) So nudge accepted, the prodigal journaler is back and if I still have any friends, Hi! I’m back. |
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If there was one word I could erase from the English language right now, it would be why. Completely remove it from the dictionary. I realize that it will case problems for normal conversation, but I feel it’s a small price to pay to keep my sanity. Bo is so in the middle of the toddler “why phase” and if I hear that word again, I’m going to scream. I swear I hear it 300 times a day, and that is with me working full-time and with Bo in day care. And he's so serious every time he asks. The problem is he's always asking it. |
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I’ve been afraid to even say this out loud, much less write it down and make it real, but I think the time has come to put it out there. Bo is now potty trained. Quick, knock on wood. Don't ask me how that happened, because I really couldn't tell you. One Sunday, he's refusing to even sit on his potty, by Tuesday, I picked him up at day care and was told he had peed every time he was on the toilet, by Friday he was telling us when he had to go, and by the next Sunday he was in underwear. That was two weeks ago, and the only accidents so far include when he was at my mom's house and Bo was having too much fun to stop playing, stuck his hands in some water, and I guess you can figure out the rest. :) The second one was Tuesday when he was with GB’s dad at their house, he told Grandpa he had to go to the potty and my father-in-law ran around looking for the potty seat instead of just sticking Bo on the toilet and holding him. Needless to say, he looked too long. Rookie Mistake. |
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I've had a Mother's Day/Birthday party with GB, Bo, my mom, brother, and sister-in-law last Sunday, dinner out with some friends last night, lunch with another friend who shares my birthday today, a steak dinner cooked by GB tonight, dinner with my Dad and his wife on Friday, and the celebration with GB’s family on Sunday. I'm going to be very sick of cake by the end of the week. :) So Tuesday night I was talking with Bo at breakfast explaining to him that I wouldn’t see him that night as he was spending the day with his Grandpa and I was going out to dinner with some friends to celebrate my birthday. He thought about it, then looked at me and said, “Mommy, when is your birthday going to be done?” This coming from a boy whose first birthday celebration was on April 5 and the last on May 2. |
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So here’s how my week has been. - GB and I stopped by the local rec center to get information on swimming lessons for Bo this summer and made the mistake of taking him with us. Now the outdoor pool doesn’t open for another two weeks, and while there is an indoor pool, we don’t have time to take him until Memorial Day Weekend and a three-year-old has no concept of time. I am now subjected to the constant question: “Is the pool open yet?” And I do mean constant. Major tactical parenting mistake.
- I had been operating under the assumption that GB and I were hosting a Mother’s Day/Birthday cookout for my mom, brother, and sister-in-law this weekend. When I got to work on Monday, there was an e-mail from my brother, asking if we were still a go for the party at his house Sunday. O_o I look back over the e-mails we sent and sure enough, there it is plain as day: an e-mail from him saying they would be happy to host the party at their house. How in the world I translated that into my house, I’ve yet to figure out.
- I walked into my polling place Tuesday morning to vote in my first ever Primary. Indiana has an open primary which means you don’t have to be a registered Democrat or Republican to vote, you just go in and request one ballot or the other. You then pick up either a blue square with a big D on it or a green square with a big R to take to the poll worker setting up the voting machine. I requested a Democrat ballot and was told to pick up a blue card and I sat there for a minute looking at the two squares confused, because for some reason, my mind was telling me to pick up a green one, but that one had an R and I don’t want R, I want D. The woman behind the table finally looked at me with a smile and said, “It’s the one with the D.” I just started laughing, as there was absolutely nothing I could say that would make me seem smart at this point. To top everything off, it turns out one of the poll workers is a neighbor that I didn’t recognize out of context.
- I started an e-mail to a colleague a couple of days ago and as it was the end of the day and wasn’t finished with it, I saved it to my Drafts folder. I’ve since spent the last two days wondering why this person hasn’t responded to an email that I never sent.
- I sent e-mails out to my mother, mother-in-law, and aunt-in-law to schedule our monthly scrapbooking/craft session for June, with the information that I could get together on the 22nd, but the 28th wouldn’t work because the 2009 Homeward Bound Walk (that is a fund-raising event for work) might be scheduled on that date. I was legitimately concerned about this possible conflict. In 2009. And no one corrected me or said WTF are you talking about.
I so need a vacation. |
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Four ways to be sure that there is a toddler in your house.
1. You are not opposed to any form of bribery.
2. There is a jar full of M&Ms on the back of the toilet and a large sticker chart next to it.
3. The Resolve carpet cleaner and Clorox Bleach Spray is left out on the counter for easy access.
4. You post with all seriousness and excitement:
Bo peed in the potty this morning for the first time!!!!!!! My son will not go to kindergarten in diapers! |
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Guess who showed up at our house last night? The Pacifier Fairy!!!!!!!!!! That’s right, last night at around 8:30 p.m., Bo decided to that the time has come to let go of his precious “Fis” and have the “pacifier lady” come and leave him a present. And then what do I do, but ask him what he’d like the pacifier fairy to bring him. Never mind, that I have had a small Cars tool box for him since Christmas, not to mention the fact that it is 8:30 p.m. and I’m home alone, so I can’t leave to get anything he asks for anyway. So, you ask, what did Bo ask for in exchange for his beloved pacifier? Screwdrivers. Big screwdrivers just like Daddy. And a hammer and a wrench. I’m not kidding you. He wanted actual tools. So what do we do? Put two screwdrivers in his toolbox. (GB wanted him to start learning the difference between a flathead and a Phillips screwdriver.) And begin the lectures about how you can only use these with Mommy and Daddy and how you have to be careful around people and furniture. And his response? “Where’s the hammer and wrench?” I swear my head almost hit the desk. We actually gave our three year old screwdrivers as a present. Are we out of our mind? Please don't answer that question. I'm afraid I already know. |
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There are strange happenings going on around here. I’d even hazard a guess that hell may actually have frozen over. Democrats are campaigning here in Indiana. Barack Obama was actually in my town just this past weekend (although I didn’t get to go) and Bill and Hillary Clinton are making several stops around the state in the next couple of weeks. For a blue voter who has lived in a very red county in a red state for many years, this is somewhat of a new experience for me. I’ve actually never voted in a primary election before. The presidential races were always decided long before May and I’ve never cared enough about local politics to vote for the nominee. But all bets are off this year and it looks like I may actually get to have a say in the presidential candidate. Now if I could just decide which one I want to vote for. |
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I’m not a sewer. I don’t even play one on TV. I’m also 5 foot 3 inches on a good day, which means I can never find pants that fit me. Petites are too short, regular too long, and Short too hard to find. So my options end up being. 1. Pay to have them altered; 2. Wear pants that are too long for me, or 3. Just do a half-ass job myself of hemming them myself. And I can tell you that number one doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should. But not anymore. I’ve found the best thing ever. Fabric glue. : ) We bought it at Christmas to cover some plywood with felt for Bo’s train set, and I finally sat down this weekend to try it on my pants. It was so easy. No pins, no thread showing, no cutting. Now we just have to see how many washes it can hold up to. And yes, I know I am both cheap and lazy. So be it. |
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I hate this time of year. I’m so ready for spring. Getting dressed every morning is a chore because I can’t stand my winter clothes anymore. I just want sunny days and warm weather. I’m sick of the beautiful one day, snowing the next. And I’m not exaggerating. Sunday was a beautiful, sunny day with temperatures in the 60s. And then last night I’m driving home in an ice storm. Bleh! Indiana weather sucks! UPDATE 3/10/08
I was talking with my boss and realized that I have to take back this post. I complained too early about the weather. Indiana always has bad weather during the high school basketball tournament. Always. And guess what started last week. So now I have to apologize for the whiny post (GB told me it was really, really whiny.) and just suck it up for the next couple of weeks. |
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I can’t believe I’ve done this. Even I think I’m nuts. But Bo’s third birthday is coming up at the beginning of April and since we’ve had a lot of family birthdays lately, birthdays are on his mind. So one day on the way home form day care we started talking about birthday cakes and what he’d like. His answer: black cake, with black icing, a lot of sprinkles, and Caillou and Rosie on top. Now the chocolate cake with chocolate icing—no problem. Sprinkles, I’ve got plenty. But the problem with having your kid fall in love with one of the more obscure children’s shows on PBS means that I can’t run down to the bakery or party store to pick of Caillou stuff. So I did what any normal person would do and hit the Internet. And I did find Caillou party supplies, even a Caillou cake topper. But Bo doesn’t want just Caillou, he wants Caillou and his little sister Rosie. So I went back to the Internet and turned to the place where all obscure things go to be sold—eBay. And that’s when common sense seems to have left me. I saw these figures for sale:  and could just see them sitting on top of Bo’s birthday cake and how excited he’d be. So I bid. And was outbid. So I bid again. And then I talked with GB who thought I was nuts, but said that $15 would be as much as we should probably pay. So I bid $15. And was outbid by 50 cents. Which just made me mad. So I bid $16. And was outbid by 50 cents. Which ticked me off again and so I bid $20. Then I sat there thinking, “GB is going to kill me. I just bid basically $25 for a toy figure to put on Bo’s birthday cake.” But I won! And I didn’t even have to pay the full $20. And I can’t wait to see Bo’s face when he sees his birthday cake. eBay is now banned from my web browser. Apparently I can’t deal with auctions. :) p.s. Yes I know it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. A long while. It all kind of built up thinking that to get back into journaling I’d have to post this really long post catching up with everything I didn’t write about since before Christmas, which of course, kept getting bigger and bigger. So I said screw it, and just jumped back into the pool. My plan is to go back and add posts, but I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for it to happen. |
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What a December. I can’t believe Christmas is less than a week away. It’s turned into a crazy month. I was so proud of myself in that 90% of my Christmas shopping was done at the beginning of the month. But time raced by, and now I find myself with presents that need to be wrapped, cookies that need to be baked and the last few gifts to be purchased. I hate it when Christmas falls at the beginning of the week. It always seems to me as if we lose valuable preparation time. Then again, I’m not exactly know for much planning ahead, so even if it fell on Friday, I’d still be procrastinating on this stuff. But GB just called and he’s now off until January 2, the twit. I really hate it when he’s off and I still have two more days of work. So, I’m putting him to work. We’ve had a lot of fun with Bo this month. Indianapolis has had two snow storms and Bo has gotten to build his first snowman (or more accurately supervise the building of his first snowman, as I did most of the work). Last weekend we headed over to GB’s aunt and uncle’s farm for a bit of sledding. Bo even helped us shovel the driveway on Sunday. Well, not so much helped, but pushed snow around with his little shovel. I thought asking him to clear of the front steps would be a good way of keeping him out of GB and my way, but that only worked until he fell off the step and into a snow drift. Which would have been funny if I hadn’t done the exact same thing not 10 minutes later. So there you go, there is some of my genes in him after all. Bo took great pleasure in being like me reminding me for the rest of the day that he fell of the stair, “just like Mommy.” I’m really looking forward to Christmas morning this year. The difference between a kid waiting for Santa who is a year and a half old and one who is two and a half is like night and day. Of course some of this may come from the M&Ms he’s getting everyday from his advent calendar (God help us all on Dec. 26) but he really seems to get the concept that Santa is bringing him presents this year. It’s really amazing how having a kid around for Christmas brings the magic back. I’m so excited to see his face on Christmas morning when he sees the train set that Santa brings him. I’m actually wondering how in the world we are going to get him to open his other presents. |
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Last year I bough a picture frame specifically for pictures with Santa. It is only out during the Holiday decoration time, and the only picture in it is Santa and Bo from last year. We had gone to a little “Santa House” put on by one of the local service clubs as we figured the low key atmosphere would be better for Bo. This year we took Santa to a place in a nearby town, but unfortunately they gave out Polaroid pictures, which not only don’t fit in the frame I have, but don’t scan worth a darn. So I’ve been meaning to take Bo back to the place we went last year to “remind” Santa what he asked for. And to get a 4x6 picture to put in my frame. :) GB, Bo and I went out for dinner Saturday at the outdoor mall nearby. It’s a rather upscale mall, so as we were waiting to be seated, we thought it might be neat to look into the Santa they had there and see if they gave out regular pictures. I ran out while GB and Bo stayed at the restaurant. The line to see Santa was out the door. I finally found someone who worked there who gave me a price list. This isn’t a picture with Santa, it’s a freaking photo shoot! The cheapest picture you can buy is a $16 5x7. That’s package 11. Package 1 is six 5x7s, four 3 ½ x 5s, and eight wallets. All for the low, low price of $60. My jaw hit the ground. It’s a photo with Santa for heaven’s sake. I don’t spend that much on actual family pictures. And who in the world needs six 5x7s with Santa and their kid. All I’m saying is that better be one damn good Santa in there. Needless to say, we’ll be going back to Santa’s House next to the Kroger’s this week where $6 will get you a nice 4x6 of Santa with Bo. |
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The Thursday before Thanksgiving our DVR broke. Dead. We’d been having problems with it freezing but that morning, we got nothing but a horrible grinding noise as we tried to start it up. After a brief mourning period for the three Grey’s Anatomy’s that I hadn’t yet watched, I realized we had a bigger problem. See, GB and I have lived most of our lives without being able to call up shows on demand and rewinding TV to see something again and again. Our son, however, has not. And he didn’t quite understand why he couldn’t watch the funny story about the squirrel coming in through the doggie door that was on the news again and again and again. How do you explain to a 2 ½ year old that in real life, you can’t rewind TV. And don’t even get me started on how much I hated relying on a VCR again, or how miserably I failed at setting it up to tape last week’s Grey’s Anatomy. It does make me sad to realize how dependent we’ve gotten on technology. (At the same time I am cursing technology, I’m also praising it for bringing us TV on the internet.) The death of our DVR sent us into a major quandary. I had already determined that I couldn’t live without a DVR, but I am cheap and the ReplayTV that we had was an older model that doesn’t have any monthly or yearly or lifetime programming fees. I really don’t want to pay for that, which meant that buying most new or used DVR was not an option. Our other option was to go to Comcast and rent one of theirs, but this would have meant an additional $30 added onto our cable bill each month--$12 for the actual DVR and the rest to upgrade to the middle tier of their digital cable packages because the DVR isn’t offered with the lowest tier. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Comcast? But thanks to the help of tergivers8and the Internet, I found a company that sold new hard drives for only $60 and no shipping charges. They promised that ANYONE could change out the hard drive and guess what? They were right! I did it! I changed the hard drive and we now have a working DVR again, which means I no longer have to watch the same six episodes of Caillou over and over again. I swear, GB and I almost brought out the new Caillou DVD we bought Bo for Christmas, just to give us a change of pace. You know your kid is watching too much of the same thing when he’s repeating the dialogue word for word. |
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My mom sent me this in an e-mail this morning, and it's hysterical. I couldn't get the e-mail to copy in LJ, so I found it on YouTube. Finally a forwarded e-mail worth preserving.
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