Under the Bed

The rumors are true. A bogeyman does live under the bed and he likes to hoard things.

I cleaned out from under our bed today and found the following:

7 socks (none of which matched of course)
15 action figures (one of whom was missing a leg)
1 hair bow
1 1/2 pairs of shoes
5 books
a clothes hanger
a black piece of plastic of undetermined purpose
3 cheezits who were well beyond the five second rule
a scuffy looking orange jelly bean

Isn't it strange how the majority of the things under OUR bed belongs to the kids?

*A big thanks to Soozadoo for the header look. Isn't it gorgeous?!

Not Fabulous

is this online Scrabulous (Scrabble). It's kicking my arse six ways to Sunday. I'm not gracious in defeat.

I play the solitaire version versus the computer robot. Yeah, yeah... robot my Aunt Fannie! More like a freaking dictionary! I get NO VOWELS. Did you know it's quite difficult to play scrabble with no vowels?

Okay sometimes I get vowels. But then the "robot" (ahem.... CHEATER) puts out words like "poyou" and "gien". Is "nidus" really a word? What about "qaid"?

Stupid Scrabulous doesn't have an easy version. I like me an easy version. One that I can beat handily. It's good for my self-esteem you know. Losing by 200+ points is NOT good for my ego! If I need my ego bashed, I'll let my kids do it, thank you very much. At least they'll offer kisses and hugs later instead of giving me a lovely little green box that says: "Robot has won game by 236 points". I think there is an implied "moron" at the end of that message.

Q anyone? I have the U, E, A, S, and Y. Why can't I have the Q?!

Happy Easter

Momma and Abby after the egg hunt.


Abby all dressed up in her Easter finery.


J.T. (who doesn't want his picture taken.... because ties "aren't cool").


The beginning of the chocolate bunny massacre.


And a bloomer shot. Because nothing is quite so precious as a little girl in her bloomers.

More Southern Things

I guess I should be more specific. These apply to the great state of Georgia. And if you didn't realize we lived in the country before... now you will.

1. A possum (or more correctly an opossum) is a flat animal that sleeps in the middle of the road. a.k.a. roadkill.

2. There are 5,000 types of snakes and 4,998 live in Georgia.

3. There is no such thing as lunch. There is dinner and then there is supper.

4. Sweet Iced tea is appropriate for all meals (even breakfast) and you start drinking it at 2 years old. We like a little iced tea with our sugar.

5. Backwards and Forwards means "I know everything about you."

6. We don't push buttons, we "mash" them. I don't know why.

7. We measure distance in minutes. "Oh, that's only about a 15 minute drive."

8. The local papers cover national and international news on one page and require six pages for local gossip.

9. We have four seasons: almost summer, summer, still summer and Christmas.

10. "Fixinto" is a word. Or a mashed together word that means "fixing to". As in "I am fixinto go to the store." We fix alot of things for some reason. "What are you fixin for supper?" "What are you fixin to do?" I guess it is a symonym for "about to"?

I'll have to think my friend Linda for inspiring this post. She sent me a list and I just compiled my favorites.

Yuck!

We've been struck by the stomach virus again. J.T. started last night at 10 p.m. It has been a long night of fetching gingerale, wet washcloths, and bucket duty. He HATES being sick (gets it from me). So after our first round, he looks at me and says: "Can we say a prayer that I will be better RIGHT NOW!" I said yes. But he would probably have to wait for it to get out of his system. He was not amused.

On top of him being sick, we were under tornado watches and warnings for most of the evening. So we've got one ear out for him and one ear out for the weather radio. And Melinda "The Panicker" is imagining us holed up in our bathroom with a vomiting child while a tornado rages around us. Stomper Girl would have been doing the same thing. Atlanta was hit with a rare tornado Friday night. The CNN center in downtown actually got a good bit of damage. March is tornado month in the South. Warm spring air is moving in and it creates such violent weather when it hits the cold air. (Bet you didn't think you'd be getting a meteorology today)

Rob took the first shift and I got up at 4 a.m. to relieve him. The morning has been spent plying the sick one with Dr. Pepper, Sponge-bob and Jimmy Neutron videos. Abby has been the little Momma. Offering wet cloths, blankets and piling the bedside table high with canned drinks. How ironic that he's too sick to enjoy her kindness? It is not a frequent happening. Nice Abby. She's usually yelling at him to "get out of my room! He's looking at me!! I wanted that (with the requisite whiny tone)!"

Right now I'm wishing we had gotten hardwood floors instead of carpet. Vomit on carpet is very difficult to clean. I'm pretty sure I've rubbed a bare spot into the den carpet as I scrubbed it with lysol and a brush. Here's hoping Rob and I aren't next.

The Strawberry Wars

My Abby adores strawberries. Wonderful, huh? A child who loves fruit. That's a good thing, right?

The only problem is that Abby loves only the first bite of strawberry. The sweet delectable, juicy bit on the tip. A few days ago I spent a great deal of my time tracking down partially eaten strawberries. Did you know that ripe, juicy, red strawberries and carpet don't mix?

I thought I'd found all the missing berries. Then I opened the fridge and discovered a juice cup filled with strawberries. Ones with no bites missing! Yay!!

BUT upon closer inspection, I noticed that it wasn't just strawberries in the cup. There was also 1/3 of a banana and a single chocolate chip couple floating in a few inches of water.



The Adventurous One has been felled by a yucky stomach bug today though. Which means lots of sympathy, lots of Barney (ugh), and lots of "Mmmmmmmmmooooommmmmmmyyyyyy". And a cease-fire in the Strawberry Wars.

Sam

Yesterday we had to put our 1 1/2 yearold dog Sam to sleep. Poor little Sammy had been viciously attacked by two other dogs in the early morning hours last Wednesday. Rob rushed him to the vet where he received excellent care for 5 days. His wounds were too grave and infection set in. We had to make the difficult decision yesterday to let him go in peace and not drag out his suffering any longer.

We rescued Sam from a litter of 13 puppies. His breed was undetermined. A little lab, a little boxer, a little this and that. He was riddled with worms and had to have two rounds of dewormer. As a puppy he loved to chew and jump and be a general nuisance. He never stayed at home, but would wander down the road to play with the neighbor's dog. He and Mack were always together. Lying together, rough-housing, playing hide-and-seek. So much so that Rob complained that we had wasted money having him neutered since he obviously wasn't interested in girls.

It was so hard to tell J.T. about Sam's death. He got this big bright-eyed, I'm-trying-so-hard-not-to-cry look on his face. Then it just all came out. We all cried together. The hardest thing to accept is that these dogs have attacked and killed before and the owners did nothing about it. We have called animal control and they have set a trap in an attempt to capture the culprits. We believe that the dog owners have already moved their dogs though.

More bad news. I have discovered we don't have a single picture of Sammy! I don't know how that happened. I hate that I don't have anything for the kids to remember him by. Perhaps we'll hang on to his collar.

Don't Be Alarmed....Rob Is Now In Control

That's right. I've hijacked Melinda's blog....because Melinda uses the same password for everything it was pretty easy. I thought I would tell ya'll a neat story (well I think its a neat story anyway). At first its going to sound like a lot of rambling but it will all tie together at the end.

I am 35 years old (thank you all for the nice birthday wishes by the way) and Melinda is 33 years old. When we first met I was 20 and she was 18. I lived in Statesboro and she lived in Metter. We had never met when we were younger, nor did we know the same people.

I've recently resumed collecting comic books after a five year hiatus and that is what reminded me of this story. I started collecting comic books when I was 9 or 10 years old and quit collecting in 2003 after amassing a 10000+ comic collection.....I know, I know, ya'll are jealous of Melinda. Anyway, way back when in the early 80's when I first started collecting there were two main comic book companies, Marvel and DC. Marvel put out Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, etc and DC published Batman, Superman, Plastic-Man etc. My collection at that time consisted of both Marvel and DC comics and around this time my friend and I decided that DC comics royally sucked and we only wanted Marvel comics. So there happened to be a used book store in Statesboro that had comics and you could trade 2 for 1. So I packed up all my DC comics and went to said bookstore and traded all my DC comics for Marvel comics so now my collection was purified with nothing but Marvel. Aside: I've long since gotten over my comic snobbery and now I collect anything that's a good story and while you may not believe it you can find some excellent writing in the comics industry. Back to the story...Years went by and I'm now 20 years old and I've just met the lovely 18 year old beauty named Melinda Rhoney and I'm completely smitten. We date, we declare ourselves boyfriend and girlfriend and we even use the "L" word. At this time I've started going to church with Melinda, so since we live in separate towns I've started spending the night at her house on Saturday (yes in separate rooms). Well one night I'm over at Melinda's house and I'm walking down the hallway and the hall closet is open, its never been open before, and as I walk by I stop and stick my head in because I'm nosy. On the shelf I notice a stack of comic books and since I'm nosy and I love comic books I take them down and guess what.....Yep, it's my old DC comics that I traded in at the used bookstore years earlier. Mrs. Pat had taken Melinda to the same used bookstore when she was a girl and Melinda had picked out the comics that I had traded in. Is that not cool?

A Smorgasbord Post

Yep, that's right. It's a little of this and a little of that.

Today is picture day at J.T.'s school. So of course he woke up with some serious bed-head issues. It took much combing and lots of water to get those wild hairs to lay down. I'm sure they popped right back up by the time he made it to school.

I choose this lovely shirt for him to wear. He didn't like it. He wanted to wear a Spiderman shirt instead. Which would have been okay except that he has grown since last summer and his Spiderman shirt is too small. The last I saw of him this morning, he was reluctantly clothed in the lovely shirt, but had bundled into a jacket to hide it. Of course the jacket doesn't match the shirt, so hopefully he will remember to take it off. And did I mention that he is now missing two front teeth? This will be the definitive school portrait: messy hair, snaggle-toothed, mismatched clothing AND an inopportune pimple. I know. A first grader with a pimple. What kind of picture day bad karma gives a 1st grader a pimple?

I have a few new southern phrases for you, courtesy of the very handsome, very southern drawling, very manly Brett Favre, American Football player.

"He's slower than steam coming off a pile of horse s***."

"It's hotter than two rats doing it* in a wool sock."

"These (foot)balls are slicker than owl s***."

Small Town Love

I grew up in a small town. Population not quite 4,000 people. As a teenager I looked forward to leaving that small town in my rearview as quickly as possible. Nothing to do. No career options. No future. I got married and moved one town away to a college town that is still on the smallish side.

But there are advantages to living in a small town. Safety is one of them. Everybody knows everybody and no one locks their doors. The Farmer's Market is always stocked with fresh, locally grown produce and homemade cakes, pies and pastries. The best things, though, is how people come together and help each other in a crises.

Mama has to receive shots that boost her white blood cells. This week, they didn't help. So her doctor wanted her to have shots on Saturday and Sunday. No big deal.... except that the office is closed on Saturday. It looked like our only option was to go to the ER, sit and wait and pay ER fees to get the shots. They had increased the dosage and Mama was very, very sick. Nauseous, dizzy, weak and exhausted. Not really up for the eternal wait you are certain to have in the ER on a weekend.

Small town calvary to the rescue. Our pharmacist's wife is a Registered Nurse. She agreed to give mother the shot at the Pharmacy on Saturday and at their home on Sunday. So at 9 a.m. Saturday, I drove Mama to the pharmacy, ushered her inside where she was given a shot. This sweet lady (whom I, of course, went to school with), got her boys up and brought them in their pajamas so my Mama didn't have to go the ER. She was even upset that we came inside! She would have come out to the car and given it so Mama didn't have to move. How sweet is that?

We could not have asked for more support from family, friends and community. There have been phone calls, meals, cards, gift baskets, books, and many other expressions of love. When I feel discouraged with the world at large. These generous, kind people remind me that there is hope and that caring, selfless people do still exist.