You Can Be A Real Mermaid Too!

Picture found here.

Grab your seashells ladies and Sebastian cue the music! Percussion, wind, words...

As I was snuggled up on the couch this evening under the comforter with my Kindle in hand, Lena came rushing from her room "Mom, you need to see this!" Forgive me for not leaping up immediately, but the number of times I've needed to see some commercial the Disney Channel is kind enough to shove down our kids throats has left me just slightly numb to the endless string of crying wolf over some toy that would collect dust in the corner 24 hours post purchase. Plus, we simply do not disturb His Majesty during cuddle time. It's against the rules.

Normally, my reluctance to rush in to view the latest infomercial she is being suckered by has stumbled upon is greeted with a stern look, crossed arms, and a bit of low growling noises. However, she usually putters back to her room without too much protest. This evening that was certainly not the case.

"Mmmoooommmm! (insert whining noise here) You NEED to see this!" She scooped up Mr. High and Mighty and set him aside like a used sock and damn near yanked my arm out my socket in an attempt to drag me from my reading spot. At this point, I'm well aware that I will get no peace until I go with her and find out what all this fuss is about. Sorry Green Gables, you will have to wait.

I sit down on Anne's lower bunk, fully expecting that I'm going to be berated for missing the commercial. Nope, my child has recently discovered YouTube holds a whole lot more than hilarious cat videos (thanks mom for sending home the dinosaur laptops) and has stumbled on the following using the search term, and I quote, "How to be a real werewolf." See the connection to the growling noises? And yes, that worries me. My child is now searching the internet for people to bite her... In retrospect, I probably should have made this incident into a larger conversation, but I guess there's always tomorrow... Anyway, back to the tale at hand...

Lena makes sure my full attention is on her laptop before pressing play on this little snippet.

While this is admittedly brilliant and a small piece of me halfway wondered if she made them in adult sizes (she does by the way) I have no intention of ordering Lena a mermaid tail for Christmas. I'm certain this will cause her utter disrepair, permanent scaring, and loads of therapy bills down the road (oh wait, that was going to happen anyway) I just can't see spending over $100 for my child to have a tail that would only fit her for the next 6 months if I'm lucky.

Hats off to the smart and crafty mom who figured out how to make her little girl's Ariel dreams come true, but sadly, my daughter will not be joining the under the sea gang because it's just too many clams for this mom.

James asked what she would do if we even did get her a tail and I immediately started making flopping motions with my body and said she'd flop herself all over the house. He laughed at me... A lot... But, we agree I'm right about that. I guess Lena will just have to deal with living Ariel's dreams of having legs. That's just the way the coral crumbles.

Maybe It's A Grandma Club?

When the weather starts to get good and cold, I tend to go on a little bit of a soup binge. There's something about hot soup on a super cold day that helps warm you from the inside out. Since it's a whooping high of 32 degrees today here in the lovely Midwest and the snow flurries have started to fall, I ran over to Meijer's today and grabbed a few soup cups to stash in my drawer for lunch this week.

With Thanksgiving just a few short days away they were completely packed! Even the express self checkout lane had a rather significant line. As I stood their waiting patiently to purchase my lunch items (I may have accidentally grabbed some Little Debbie Christmas Trees to hide here at work as well) I noticed a bit of a trend among my older fellow shoppers. They all had short hair.

It got me to thinking about my own grandmothers. Most of them have passed away, but I have distinct memories of my grandmothers, my great grandmothers, and even one great great grandmother. They too all had/have short hair. I'm slightly curious, is this some sort of grandmother initiation or right of passage? I can't really recall at what point my Gram's made the decision to part with her long locks and sport what appears to be the honorary Grandma Do. All I know is that now that I think about it, I can't remember my Gram's having long hair. I've only seen pictures.

I'm wondering, am I the who has noticed this odd coincidence?

She was a knock-out... And to me, she still is.

I'm On My Way to Nerd Heaven!

For the past couple weeks now, my manager and I have been discussing upgrading our office programs to the new Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise package. While I'm fairly certain it would bore several people to tears, the idea of getting my hands on this new software makes me drool like a kid who just walked into Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory!

The features and abilities of this glorious cloud based office suite is putting my inner geek into overdrive at the moment. I can feel the adrenaline levels rising at the thought of getting my hands on such a marvelous toy sophisticated tool to help aid in our overall production. It's not only the upper crust of Word and PowerPoint, but an entire management system to integrate the whole office seamlessly... Simply put, we're headed into nerd heaven for me!

While my co-workers are looking at me like I'm some sort of strung out junkie on the verge of getting her fix, my manager and I are buzzing like little bees about it. We share that special bond that only two tech obsessed super geeks can really understand. It's one of the things I love about working here. It finally brought me to someone who is not stuck in the technological stone-age!

I won't bore you all with the details, but it looks like that's the route we'll be taking sooner rather than later. My joy was overflowing and I just couldn't help myself!

Sometimes You Just Gotta Go Mom

Ummmm... Did you think I was going to be someone else today?

Lena returned to school today and needless to say after two days on hiatus, she came home with plenty of make up homework. When she called to check in I told her to get started on it. Not really what she wanted to hear, so I had to pull my parent card out.

It got me to thinking about the whole fact that being your child's best friend while they're young is really nothing short of a delusion. Don't get me wrong, I will be the first person to say that my daughter is my friend, but I'm also not afraid to draw the line and slap my mom card on the table whenever I see fit.

I love my daughter. And that's just it... I love my daughter.

I love her too much to let her walk all over me. I'm a big advocate for allowing my child to make choices, to assert her independence, to be who she wants to be... Within reason.

I have one friend in particular who has adopted the whole parenting through friendship concept and personally speaking, I think she's nuts! I love her, but her daughter sorta reminds me of this...

Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little (or maybe I'm not). Either way, I refuse to let Lena end up like either of those two brats! I will continue to "go mom on her" whenever she's getting a little too big for her breeches. I'm the parent and at the end of the day... What I say... Goes.

I Could Never Be Amish!

I never thought the sight of my kitchen light being on could fill me with so much joy! I was like a kid on Christmas morning jumping up and down for joy when I pulled into the drive last night. Call me spoiled, but after 3 long days power has finally been restored to our house and I have no idea how the Amish do it! Let me tell you, you don't know what a hot commodity running water and lights are until you don't have it!

Sunday we had spent the day downtown at the Museum of Science and Industry. We knew there were storms, we knew they were bad (James and my brother-in-law were grumbling about the cancelled Bears game), but in all honesty we were really none-the-wiser about just how bad they were. While massive tornadoes were leveling parts of Illinois and Indiana we were safely nestled inside the museum enjoying the Disney Archives exhibit. If I have internet at home restored later today, I will upload all of the photos to my Facebook and Google+.

When we had left our house it was clear out and when we left the museum it was clear out. However, we came home to the power being out. Now, I'm fully aware of the fact that we live in the sticks and this does tend to happen out here. Usually we lose it for about half a day to a day and then we're good to go again. Knowing this, I wasn't overly concerned and I actually rather enjoyed our first evening without power. Since no one could zone out with the TV, James couldn't get internet on his iPad, and we weren't messing around on our cells phones to conserve the battery just in case (they double as our alarm clocks) we dusted off a good old fashion board game and played by candle/lantern light. I may have been the only one who found spending an entire day unplugged thrilling, but Lena and James didn't complain too much. We went to bed that night figuring we would wake up to the power being on.

Well.... No such luck. Even then, I wasn't really concerned, I assumed it would be back when we got home. Lena on the other hand was a little stressed out about it. "Mom, how am I going to charge my new Kindle??" Plain and simple... You don't. Not exactly the answer she was looking for, but she sucked it up all the same. Monday afternoon, I received a call from a Nipsco technician following up about the pole down that I had reported the night before. He assured me that they were in route and that they would get the problem fixed. See, no worries right?

After speaking with him, it didn't occur to me that I should have arranged additional coverage for Lena after school. She's okay to be home alone for a couple of hours until either James or I gets off work. When I got home, I fully expected to find Lena glued to her Kindle with a kitty in her lap. I did not expect to find a dark house with a terrified tween freezing in the dark with a lantern. (There goes that Mother of the Year Award... Again.)

It took me all of 5 seconds to decide she simply could not stay here. I called my parents and let them know I was bringing them a grand baby immediately. Lena packed her bag quickly and then we hit the road for the 50 minute drive to Gramma's house. Now that the powers returned, she'll be coming home today. She's not going to enjoy the make up homework she'll have, but at least I knew she was warm and fed and could flush the toilet (it's the little things that matter).

I am beyond thrilled to have power back, because I was downright freezing my ass off! But I do have one thing to say about how no power messed up my usual routine...

HOLY LAUNDRY BATMAN!!!

Maybe the whole no power thing wasn't so bad after all. Oh well, back to the grind I guess. 

Sorry I'm MIA

Thanks to the storms that came through the Midwest on Sunday, we're still without power. We're going on day #3 without lights, heat, and water. Took the little one up to Grandma's house for the time being. At least she's safe and warm, which is all that matters. Not sure when I'll be back up and running, but I'm crossing my fingers that it will be sooner rather than later!

Basic Car Maintenance is Worth The Time to Learn

For weeks now I have been asking James to take a look at my car. It was being rather picky about wanting to provide heat and here in the Midwest that's not really an optional function. Heat and AC are absolute requirements if you want to avoid things like pneumonia and/or heat stroke. For someone who used to be a mechanic, he sure hates working on any car but his own. When his car wasn't working right over the summer you bet your bottom dollar the moment he got home he was under the hood tinkering with it. When my AC wouldn't work and I needed him to recharge it, he waited through 2 months of my non-stop nagging before he took the whole 10 minutes to do it.

When the colder temperatures started creeping in a few weeks back (keep in mind I'm always freezing when it's below 75 out) I noticed that it would take longer for my heat to kick in even after having warmed up my car. I knew based on the whole AC fiasco that I better bring it up now so that maybe, just maybe, he might look at it before the first snow. No such luck!

We got our first dusting of our inevitable winter wonderland a few days ago and still he's not so much as opened my hood. Instead he saw fit to joke about how great it is to have remote start now (his old car didn't make it past July) and that he'd look at it this weekend for sure. Meanwhile, I've been scrapping frost off my window all week, shivering and shaking like a Parkinson patient, and swearing profusely while beating the hell out of my dashboard trying to will my heat telepathically to work.

Last night at 2:30am my sister called and needed a ride back from a party she was at. She was completely hammered and the person who was supposed to be the DD for her group had not held up her end of the bargain. First, let me say, I'm incredibly proud that my sister is smart enough, even when drunk, to not get in the car with some idiot and to call me instead. Getting up and rescuing her did not bother me one bit, the fact that it was below 30 and my heat didn't come on at all in that hour and a half span that I was in the car however made me furious! I decided right then and there at 3am that I was not going to wait around to see if James will maybe look at my car this weekend between our upcoming Thanksgiving/Birthday dinner on Saturday with his family and the Museum of Science and Industry trip we have planned on Sunday to see the Disney Archives exhibit.

Since today is my late day in due to the monthly sales meeting, I dropped Lena off at school and went over to the mechanic shop that I've been using in town for the past 3 years. (Yes, I work at an auto place and my boss would probably be terribly disappointed that I take my car somewhere else.) When I arrived I explained what had been going on with the car and he said it sounded like my blower control valve could possibly be sticking, but before he ordered any parts he wanted to just double check. He pulled my car into the garage and less than 10 minutes later he had my heat working and I was good to go. Want to know what was wrong? My coolant was empty! That's it! It cost me all of $8 to have him fill it up again for me and my heat is working like a brand new sauna.

I'm thrilled my heat is back, but I'm a little perturbed at both James and at my guys at work. For starters, I just got an oil change not all that long ago from work and they're supposed to top up all my fluids when doing so. Washer fluid, coolant, etc. None of which was done. I will be having some words when I get into work today to let him know that the general service guys are half assing the oil changes. Second, if James had ever bothered to so much as open the hood of my car like I've been asking, he would have spotted it right away and it could have been fixed already!

Ladies, never assume a man will take care of that kind of thing for you. If it doesn't effect them directly, it will end up on the back burner. Educate yourselves on basic things like coolant levels and you can avoid making the mistake of freezing unnecessarily like I just did!

When You Try To Snuggle a Dragon

This is what happens....

Happy 11th Birthday Baby Girl!

It was a great weekend! We finally celebrated Lena's official 11th birthday on Saturday. Her and I went to breakfast, just the two of us.

James was sweet enough to stay home and clean the house for her sleepover later that evening. Honestly, I think it's because he didn't want to go to the mall, but I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Mostly we just window shopped for a little while. And found the most disturbing candle ever created...

Don't get me wrong, I love the smell of bacon cooking on a Sunday morning, but I wouldn't want my house to smell like frying pig 24/7.

When we got home, James had tackled the entire house which left me free to help Lena clean her tornado. When I say help, I basically mean I cleaned her room myself while she watched. 

Her little girlfriends arrived right on time at 5:00 and James headed out to his friend's house for the evening while I chaperoned 5 giggly squealing tweens. They had a blast though! A little Wii Dance party, pizza, and the remaining Halloween candy went over with much enthusiasm. 

I ended up spending a good portion of the night in my room watching Fried Green Tomatoes because once the necessity of mom was done (i.e. pizza), I was promptly dismissed...

I finally tossed in the towel around 11:30 because I couldn't keep my eyes open much longer. However, I was informed that they will still wide awake when James got home from boys night out at 3:30am. 

I woke up to this the next morning, which melted my heart.

Happy 11th birthday baby girl!

P.S. You can stop growing now.

Kids Make Noise??

One of the girls in my office is easily irritated by noise. Not just loud noises, but any noise at all. Provided she is not the one making it of course. It's a running joke with the rest of us to see how long it will take her to complain the moment anyone makes a sound she doesn't approve of. Which, by the way, is basically all of them. A click of a pen, a tap of typing on a keyboard, the feeding of paper in the printer... You name it and she has a hissy fit. I can't count the number of times she's slammed the door to her office because I had to print something.

At the moment, there is a toddler in our waiting room. Her mom is here getting new tires put on her car and as any mom knows, sometimes you have to take them along. Normal people just don't have the luxury of a built in nanny so we don't have to drag our noisy children along with us. The toddler is evidently playing at the moment because we can her a very faint scrapping noise coming through the wall.

This noise didn't even register on my radar. As a parental veteran with 3 kids, I've learned to just tune a vast majority of sounds out. It's the quiet that gets my attention usually, because it means my girls are up to something. However, this tiny minuscule sound evidently sent off a blaring alarm in her head. I just heard her call up to the front desk and ask what all the racket was. Of course, that caught my attention and I started to listen. I could barely hear this noted distraction when I hear her tell the staff member...

"Oh, it's another kid."

Yes, grinch, it is.

Now, currently, she doesn't have any children and I simply cannot wait until she does! I know that she's still lost in lala land celebrating her one month marriage anniversary (which she tells anyone and everyone who will listen, including potential employees she's interviewing), but I'm fairly certain that her rude awaking will not be too terribly far off. Patience is not her virtue. She was dating her now husband for 6 whole months prior to the engagement and was married within that first year. I don't exactly see her waiting to dip her toes into the pregnancy pool too long either.

She's constantly telling us that when she has kids they will: never cry in public, they will not be allowed to run around in public, they will be perfectly behaved at all times. I say good luck! Us moms here in the office have tried to make it clear to her that she's living in a fantasy world, unicorns are not real, and that she needs to be prepared for the inevitable string of tantrums that are in her future whether she likes it or not. But we're not her, so what do we know right?

We're all in agreement that she probably shouldn't reproduce because there's a very likely chance that the poor child will suffer from shaken baby syndrome the first time she has to suffer through hours of endless crying for no reason. Personally, I'd love to be a fly on the wall when that happens and buzz in her ear "We told you so!"

It's just an unavoidable fact of parenthood... Children make noise. Deal with it!

In-Laws Can Be Strange Creatures

My mother has taken up a torch on getting James to call her mom. This has been going on since back in July, now that it's evident us living together isn't going to send him screaming in the opposite direction.

Lena has student council after school today. They only meet once a month, but it's literally right after classes end and she has to be picked up at 3:30. If it let out at 5, I would have been able to make arrangements to skip lunch once a month to be there to pick her up, but there's no way for me to leave work 2 1/2 hours early without causing my boss to have a minor stroke. So instead, my mom has committed to doing it for me. While she now lives 45 minutes away from our house, once a month isn't so bad to make the drive for her. It gives her an excuse to see Lena and gets her out of the house a little at the same time.

This morning she sent me a text asking for permission to use our bathtub when her and Lena get back to the house. Her new place only has a shower and she's always been someone who's rather fond of taking a bath. However, she wanted to make sure to let me know so I could give James a heads up.

"I just want to make sure it doesn't freak him out to come home and find his mother-in-law naked in his bathroom when he gets home."

Now, neither one of us really cares. Frankly, her using the bathtub is piddly in comparison to when she lived down the street and used our house as a convenient and free grocery store. (It was almost like a game... Let's see what's missing today! Oh, only half the freaking brand new bag of Sam's Club coffee. No, we didn't need that last package of toilet paper, we like using our hands!). Get the point? So when I told him exactly what my mom said, what caught his attention wasn't the bath part, it was the mother-in-law part.

He pointed it right away that she was at it again. He insists that even when we do get married, he has no intention of referring to her as mom. He still refers to his step-mom by her first name and she's been around since he was Anne's age. My mom however is nothing if not persistent. She thinks she's being so clever throwing it out there at random and is convinced that one day she will get him to slip up. My dad also plays the "I love you" game at the end of phones calls with him to see if he can get him to say it back. That one is more likely to happen though, because he's almost gotten him twice now.

I'm just grateful that he's got a good sense of humor and can take my sometimes very strange parents in stride...

A Little Blog Cleaning

At this point, I'm following along with several blogs. I love being a part of such a wonderful community filled with fantastic moms! I love following their daily lives and seeing how they're doing. I love reading their stories and sharing in the laughter and sometimes the tears that seem to come as a packaged deal when you have kids.

The problem is though, sometimes it's hard to keep up! I can't seem to remember which ones I've read and which ones I haven't. So today, I moved all of my following feeds out of Blogger and into BlogLovin. 

I did this for 3 reasons:

1. It marks what I've read. No more guessing for me thank you!

2. I can access everything on my iPhone. With a family that's constantly on the go this is absolutely essential!

3. They track practically every blog on every platform. Not a single blog I follow couldn't be found through their site.

In a life filled with the chaos of raising 3 kids and that consistent motion that is just a part of our daily life, at least I have one thing organized and under control... Now if I could only do that with my closet I'd be in pretty good shape!

Someone Please Call Dr. Kevorkian!

You know how people are always saying that child birth is the worst possible pain ever? Wrong! 

Last night I was laying in bed, tinkering around on the computer, then BAM! All of sudden I felt a terrible pain surge through the whole left side of my face. If I had been unconscious, I would have been convinced that someone snuck into my room and sucker punched me square in the jaw.

At this point, I'm pretty sure that one of my wisdom teeth has shifted. At the time the invisible blow to my face occurred, I was still waiting for James to get home, I hadn't eaten anything (even though there's a huge bowl of Halloween candy on the table right now) and I certainly didn't mysteriously fall off the bed and smack my face into the dresser without noticing. 

Normally, I'm an anti medicine kind of gal. You practically have to pin me to the floor, sit on top of me, and force feed it down my throat to get me to take it. Medicine either makes me zonk out like a coma patient or it wires me out like I just snorted an 8 ball of coke. Seriously folks, hand me a couple Sudafed and a sponge and I can go for hours...

It took all of 10 minutes feeling that excruciating pain before I dug into our secret stash of pain pills left over from James' shoulder surgery back in May. No one had to force me to do it, I just straight up swallowed that sucker down like it was a piece of candy. When it didn't provide instantaneous relief (I think they should make instant dissolve hydrocodone, don't you?) I hopped in the shower hoping to distract myself while it took it's sweet ass time dispersing into my system. The warm water helped a little, but a hot shower only goes so far.

Mid-shower, James got home, popped his head in and said hi. Thinking that I might be okay to venture out, that maybe it was starting to kick in, I shut off the water, wrapped myself in a towel, and walked out of the bathroom. Instead of "how was your day?" I got:

"Baby, why is your face swollen?"

That obvious huh?

I calmly explained through gritted teeth how I wanted to fetch the pliers out of the tool box and yank out my own teeth. Or that I'd rather being having contractions, because at least when I was in labor I never had thoughts of ramming my head into a wall to just make it stop.

"Um, sorry..."

Thank you hunnie, that was so comforting in my hour of need. I guess I know who's not going to ever be Mr. Sympathetic.

At the moment, it's tolerable. I feel a pretty consistent ache, but at least I didn't smuggle pliers in my purse to work just in case. I am however thinking it might be time to suck it up and see the dentist about having them removed.

Three Down, Two To Go

There are certainly benefits of coming from a family the size of a small country... For instance, you don't just have a birthday party, you get a birthday month when you're the spawn of the Nowhere family.

Lena and Paige have birthdays just a few weeks apart and it's been a cycle of celebrations since mid-September. It started back during our trip to Michigan. My grandparents are snow birds so on our final trip to Grand Haven before Christmas comes around we celebrated the girls' birthday with them. A week ago we celebrated with my Indiana family and this weekend we celebrated with the other half of my family up north in Aurora. Sadly, there was no getting out of work for Paige so she didn't get to go with for the lunch part, but Gramma sent back all sorts of goodies.

My step-mom is the birthday queen of our family tree and treated us all to an amazing lunch at a hibachi grill. Lena, being a long time member of this family, has been on several occasions. Her and my mom are kindred seafood spirits and they go to town on the poor unfortunate souls. They were in heaven with the shrimp, scallops, lobster, etc. Not being a huge seafood fan and given the fact that it requires sacrificing a few limbs to purchase, dinning on things that swim are a special treat for Lena.

Anne, on the other hand, is still learning the multitude of personalities in my family and how each one does things differently. She'd never been to a hibachi grill before. You'd think we'd just taken her to Disney World with how excited she got! She wanted to see every corner of the restaurant, wanted to use chop sticks, and didn't complain at all about trying new foods. That by itself is an exceedingly rare occasion. She was just so thrilled by the whole experience that she was willing to take in every moment and every bite of it. She was not however, very fond of them starting the grill...

Anne immediately shot backwards when he lit the oil and you'll notice her slowly schooching back toward the table. Overall all though, the whole family had a great time with Gramma and Auntie Pika. We even got a couple new pets to take home...

Now all we have left is Lena's slumber party with her girl friends this Saturday and birthday dinner / Thanksgiving with James' family next weekend. We're almost to the end... For a couple weeks at least!

Gee, Thanks Mother Nature...

Well, Mother Nature decided that she didn't like Northwest Indiana all that much yesterday. She decided she was going to pour down rain all over the place and several of the towns in our area rescheduled Halloween for today. I'm not entirely sure how you decide to move a holiday, but they did.

We refused to be detoured from celebrating though and headed off to the mall over in Merrillville because they were offering a Trick-Or-Treat for kids 12 and under at several of the stores. Problem is... So did about a 1000 other families...

Trick-Or-Treat started at 5pm and we arrived at 5:15pm. By that time literally almost every single store was out of treats. I had no idea that it would take less than 15 minutes for them to run out. Given that there were not many options, we decided to go get some ice cream instead. 

The lady at TCBY told us that people had started lining up at about 4pm. Lena wasn't too heart broken though. She's heading to trick-or-treat tonight instead and there's nothing a little ice cream and an awesome aunt can't fix!