Archive for the ‘Family Life’ Category
One More Thing
Monday, August 4th, 2008
Some of the best words are spontaneous.
I specifically remember the first time The Hubby told me he loved me. It was 1988 – Valentine’s Day weekend. It was also the time of the Winter Olympics. I used to watch figure skating all the time. We were at Howard Johnson’s hotel – he splurged on a Valentine’s Day special. We were watching the skating. I looked back at him and said, “I love figure skating.” He looked back at me and said, “I love you.” I don’t think he knew he was going to say that until after the words came out of his mouth.
And he’s probably been wondering how he can take those words back ever since!
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Awesome Post
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
I had a great idea for a post this morning. Can’t remember it, so you get this post instead.
July is shaping up to be a hard month. All this driving back and forth to the city (can I tell you how much I love driving in the city?) twice a day is wearing me out. I think The Boy is getting worn out too. It’s getting to be the last few weeks before the play, and things are getting intense, I think. The Hubby is burning the midnight oil at work. Travel has been moderate, but he’s been at the office late all week (ok, I know it’s only Tuesday, but it already feels like Thursday night!).
My goal for the week is to go to Tai Chi twice and kickboxing once. I just can’t spend all the time driving AND taking classes – I have to get some work done sometime, you know. So, I am on track – I went to tai chi this morning. We were in the small room again. Sometimes I like it and other times it feels claustrophobic. There were six students this morning and it was verging on claustrophobic. I will go again on Thursday – I haven’t been to a Thursday class for about 3 weeks. I bet Martiza thinks I’ve dropped off the face of the earth!
We’ve been watching Last Comic Standing. (We use the DVR and catch up whenever we remember to.) They’ve come up with some great ways to test the improv skills of the comics. There was a “boxing match” where they had to “hit” each other with one liners. There was the prop comedy test – they had to get items from a Bed, Bath and Beyond and then make a routine of props (like Carrothead does). Whoever wins the contest has “immunity” and can’t be voted off that week. Then each comic votes who they think should be off the show. The one with the most votes gets to choose 2 others, and then all 3 of them go in front of a club audience to do their routine. The winner of that stays on the show; the other two are gone. It makes for a quick way to get rid of the dead weight on a reality show!
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Busy Summer Days
Monday, July 21st, 2008
Hmmm… it’s been almost a week since I posted. Where have the days gone?
Let’s go back in time…
Monday (today) – drove The Boy to summer theater program. Back home to work. Productive day – pushed papers effectively and efficiently. Picked up The Boy at summer theater program; picked up some things at grocery store. Made dinner – waited for The Hubby. Ate dinner – didn’t like it (too much onion in the chicken salad). Ran to church to clean up from Book Sale.
Sunday (yesterday) – church in the morning. Stayed a bit later to try to sell some more books from Book sale. Drove The Boy to see friend’s play about a half hour away. Stopped at Target to return something and pick up more clothespins. Grabbed a quick snack (was informed by The Hubby that July is National Ice Cream Month and Sunday was National Ice Cream Day – we celebrated in style!) Drove back to pick The Boy up; drove him to girlfriend’s house; drove to movie theater to meet up with friends and watch Hellboy II. Drove back to The Boy’s girlfriend’s house, picked up The Boy, came home, snuggled into bed.
Saturday – up early to get to church Book Sale. At church until noontime. The Boy got picked up in the afternoon to watch a movie with girlfriend; when movie was over, they hung out here. Drove girlfriend to her house; came back home. Went to watch The Dark Knight (very good!), came home, snuggled into bed.
Friday – drove The Boy to summer theater program. Back home to work. Picked up The Boy at summer theater program. Went to Renaissance Fair with The Hubby, The Boy, and some friends. Very nice, but quiet there. Went to Ruby Tuesdays’ for dinner/dessert. Horrible service, but awesome Tall Chocolate Cake.
Thursday – drove The Boy to summer theater program. Goofed off with The Hubby. Picked up The Boy at summer theater program.
Wednesday – drove The Boy to summer theater program. Went to kickboxing class. Went home to get some work in. Picked up The Boy at summer theater program. The Hubby came home late – waited up for him until 1 am.
And that’s where the days have gone….
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Laundry
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
Ok, it’s not the most exciting subject. (Not even close)
But, everyone has to deal with laundry. I figure I have been doing my own laundry since I was at least 10, so I have been at this for 25 years(ok, more than that, but who’s counting?). Then, if you add in that I started doing Hubby’s laundry at least 18 years ago, and then The Boy’s for the last 15, it starts to add up. And I’m still not that awesome at it.
I hardly ever pre-treat stains.
I hardly ever iron.
I hardly ever iron to anyone’s satisfaction.
I do, however, fold the clothes to MY satisfaction. It is just one of those routine, habitual things – the particular ways I fold the clothes. And if I don’t fold them just the way I like… I will take them out and re-fold them. Just a bit of OCD there, huh?
So recently I had my best friend Sally help me out with a laundry problem. I give her FULL credit for the solution to my problem. There are 2 laundry baskets upstairs for The Boy (one in his room and one in the bathroom) and 2 in our bedroom (one for me and one for Hubby). So when I would do laundry, I would get all the laundry baskets into the basement and sort the clothes into piles for washing. But, if laundry took more than a day (that work thing is a real pain in the butt!), then we were left with no laundry baskets in our rooms to use.
So Sally said: you should get some of those collapsible clothes hampers. Put them in the regular baskets, like an insert, and just take those out on laundry day. So even if it doesn’t all get done, at least there is a place in the rooms to put the days’ dirty clothes into – and they won’t land on the floor (it’s a theory, anyway).
So I did that and it is AWESOME! (See how easy I am to impress?) I took it a step further and bought some large cloth hampers and wrote “WARM”, “COLD”, and “JEANS/TOWELS” on it for sorting. So now I don’t have piles of dirty clothes on my basement floor (no more kitty cat nesting areas!).
But you are probably thinking… “what about the whites? Doesn’t she have any whites?” Of course I do, silly. I just sort those right into the washer and get them done first.
And now I am “going green” (no, I am not turning into a frog) by line drying.
I used to do this all the time when I was a kid. Our house was so old that there was no vent to the outside for the dryer, so instead of heating up the non-air conditioned house in the summer time, my mother made us line dry the clothes.
Hubby & I purchased some retractable clotheslines and put up the 40′ one. I’m not sure how impressed I am with it… it tends to sag too easily. Instead of putting up the other retractable line (only 20′), we re-appropriated the dog line as a clothes line. It works pretty well – doesn’t droop too much. We haven’t used the line for either of the dogs for at least a year, maybe longer, so it doesn’t interfere with that. (They were starting to dig and that was getting The Hubby kinda upset.) My problem will be when we have a “full” laundry day. I used every inch of the dog line AND the 40′ retractable line for a “light” laundry day (about 3 to 4 days worth). Laundry adds up in this house due to Karate classes. And it’s stinky, sweaty, wet laundry … so it’s not like I would ask anyone to “re-use” the shirt, thinking it was “just worn for a few hours”. So I may need to start doing laundry twice a week instead of once.
Of course, that all depends on the weather. The great thing about summer is the sun; the bad thing is afternoon thunder showers and humidity. Either one of those will throw your schedule off.
One of my goals for doing this is to offset the kilowatts we use on the house air conditioner. I’ve often read that one of the biggest draws of electric power in a home is the dryer. So, for the summer, I will be trying to conserve energy by using the clotheslines instead of the dryer. I do see where there may be an emergency that I will have to use it, but as a regular habit, I will be hanging them up to dry.
The Boy commented that when he touches his clothes they seem stiff, but when he gets them on they feel fine. No other real comments about this little experiment yet. We’ll see how it goes!
Posted in Family Life, when I was a kid | Comments Off on Laundry
Roses and a day off
Friday, July 11th, 2008
So I basically took today (Thursday) off. I hung out with my friend Sally. We don’t get to see each other much since she moved out of town (I’ve almost forgiven her for moving). She came over, we had some lunch, some mom to mom chit chat, and then headed out to IKEA for some fun.
We’re cheap, so fun for us is: a watering can, spray bottles, wooden spoons and squeegees. Exciting, huh? It probably cost me more in gas to get there then what I spent there.
Here are some pictures of the new rose bushes Hubby ordered. One actually has a bud; the rest are growing but aren’t quite in the budding stage yet.
Here is a picture of the new, improved mulched areas:
It looks a lot cleaner than with the edging.
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4th of July
Saturday, July 5th, 2008
Well, we had a “small” get together for the 4th. I guess for us, it was small – only about 24 people. It did rain on us, though. Not a total rain out, but close. Just as Hubby was starting up the grill, it started to rain. So we had everyone eating in the house – which is not a big deal. We did pretty good on the food too – usually we go way overboard and have too much left over. We only ended up with six burgers and a package of dogs left. We had generous guests that brought various salads and desserts. Jo brought an especially awesome cake with buttercream frosting. Hmmm.
Today we all went to see the movie Hancock. It was a pretty decent movie. I have given up expecting much from movies, so if anything I am pleasantly surprised when I like a movie. There are a few exceptions, like the upcoming The Dark Knight. I am totally expecting to love that movie. And if I don’t, I’m gonna complain! I always look forward to the Harry Potter movies and the thought of The Hobbit by Peter Jackson has me excited too.
Just a few more days until it’s back to work. Vacation time is so weird somehow – I totally lose track of what day it is. Starting Monday, it’s back to a scheduled life. The Boy starts his summer theatre program, so it’s back AND forth to the city for me! Plus I will get back to class -both tai chi and kickboxing. I took off this week since I slept through my Tuesday tai chi class and was too sore on Thursday to go. I figure I have been working just as hard at yard work as I would at kickboxing – or at least I am as tired as if I did. The Hubby goes back to work and will get back into his routine as well. Hopefully not too much travel on his plate for the next few weeks.
Hope you all had a nice, safe 4th of July weekend!
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Summer Projects
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
Man, where does the summer go?
It goes into the abyss known as “Summer Projects” – that’s where it goes!
We got a load of topsoil and a load of mulch delivered before we left for Houston. So over the last couple of days and for the next few days we will be brightening up our old mulched areas, as well as enlarging some of them. The topsoil is for some bare spots we have, mostly from the time when we first built the house and we had huge runoffs since we didn’t have any grass grown yet.
Last year we did the mulch thing and were pretty happy with the results. We put up wooden edging, and after a year of it, we think that maybe just mulch looks better (and is much easier to deal with – just mow around it, no need to weed wack around the edging)! So we are taking all the edging down (see below picture) and just leaving the mulch. I was too tired to take a picture of it today – maybe over the next couple of days I will.
This is a picture from last year… and what we are aiming for again this year for the apple tree area.
Plus there are these holes we seem to grow. It seems everytime we turn around, we have grown a new hole. The hole in the front of the apple tree is most annoying. We have this lovely spot, mulched out and looking great, except for this hole under the bench. And sometimes there is something IN the hole. It has four legs, a tail and a wet nose. It growls if you try to make it do things like give back socks or try to take the toy away from it. Yes, it is our very own Chewie that makes these holes everywhere. He digs in, settles in, and curls right in there to cool down (or warm up if it’s fall/winter). Pansy at least only digs to bury a bone or special treat (a.k.a deer bones).
So we will be spending the next few days updating our lawn. And the dogs will spend just as much time digging it up.
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Houston
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
Well, we just got back from our trip to Houston. We went to participate in our karate school’s Nationals Tournament. This is the second year we went (and also the second time they have had this tournament). And by participate, I mean The Boy did. He competed in Sparring, Grappling and Traditional Kata. As a non-black belt, that was everything he could take part in. Once he becomes a black belt he can also compete in creative weapons or creative empty hands forms. That is where he can make up his own kata – with music if he wants.
The Hubby did end up participating, in a way. Sensei called me into one of the school’s offices and handed me a camera. He asked me to take pictures of the event as I was a “responsible” person. I was happy to help out, but pictures are not my strong suit. The Hubby shares this opinion – he has basically given up on training me on using his camera (hence, I have my own camera now). He saw me come out of the office with the camera in hand and immediately asked what I was doing. When I explained, he took the camera and became the official unofficial photographer. He went out onto the floor with all the participants – took shots of everyone he could.
As a karate student, he had a better understanding of when kicks, turns and moves would be performed. He showed me some of the shots he caught (it was a digital SLR, so he could do that) and they looked great. There was part of the day when the lights were off (it gets hot in Houston when you have 100+ people in a room in 90+degree weather!) so some shots may look like they were taken in the dark.
All in all we had a good time. There were about 20 or so students from our school that participated, and about another 10 or so that were there to help out and cheer their family on. The Boy had a good time hanging out with his karate friends. It was nice to be able to let him wander the hotel and hang out at the pool without worrying about him.
And now for the results:
The Boy has never grappled before. He was going to grappling class, where they worked on drills. But school got in the way, and he really hadn’t been to class since early May. He was just looking to get some experience in grappling, and that’s what he got. There were four boys in his division. He came in fourth. But he got to grapple twice – and the second time he did better than the first. I did not watch. I videotaped it. There is a difference – one way you are actively watching what is going on; the other you are making sure you get the action in the screen. I don’t think I can actively watch that.
Sparring: The Boy apparently got moved into the 15-16 year old division (he is still technically 14). There were three in that division once he was placed into it. He placed third. In his defense, one of the kids had a very long reach and the other used a style that was hard to defend against. Plus, he had just come back from his second grappling match and only had about two minutes to catch his breath and get into his sparring gear.
Kata: I think he was robbed. He got second place. He was very strong (this tends to be his strong suit, in my humble opinion). The kid who got first apparently “forgot” a move. He only won by .10 (one tenth) of a point, so maybe I shouldn’t be too upset. But still!
Here are some pictures (I know you are dying for pictures!):
above – Our School’s Participants
above – Sensei talks to the grapplers before things get started
above – here is the Kata scores being given out. The kid on the very left is the one who won.
Posted in Family Life, karate/tai chi | Comments Off on Houston
Happy Fathers Day
Sunday, June 15th, 2008
Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there.
We aren’t doing much today. We went out to dinner last night to celebrate Hubby’s birthday (10th), Father’s Day (today) and our anniversary (on the 16th – married 18 years).
I went to church this morning and we had our hymn sing. Once every two or three months we start the church service ten minutes earlier and get to shout out our favorite hymns to sing. My parents and I go to the same church, so I called out for hymn #144, This is My Father’s World. It is my father’s favorite hymn, and was very appropriate for Father’s Day.
Came home from church, made a light lunch and have just basically putzing about since then. I did however, accomplish one goal: I got the sides of my tomato planter up. I bought this “miracle tomato” grower thingie. Ok, not a very technical term there – but this is a special planter designed to grow your tomatoes on a deck or patio with a minimum of fuss and square footage. We always like fresh tomatoes, so I am hoping that I can grow a decent amount and always have fresh on hand.
So I got some tomato plants from my uncle, and planted them. He also generously gave me 8 heads of lettuce and 4 pepper plants. I wasn’t really expecting anything else besides the tomato plants, so I had to do some scurrying around to find pots for them. I’m not that big into peppers and I don’t know if I gave them enough room to grow effectively – so that is another experiment in process. I put the lettuce in some hanger baskets and they seem to be doing well.
Anyway, back to the tomato planter: I got the plants in and have been watering it at least every other day. It seems to have been raining at least once a day or every other day, so it hasn’t been hard to keep the soil moist. They have grown pretty quickly so far. But I didn’t have time and energy to put up the “cage” for them to grow on. So, I got that all put together and now my tomatoes have something to grow on.
I will let you know how it goes!
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Busy, Busy, Busy
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
Yes, I know it has been a while since I last posted. It seems to have been a very busy stretch of time. I also haven’t felt much like writing – and I’ve noticed I haven’t been cruising around the web so much lately.
So, anyway…
we had a karate graduation at the end of April.
So here is The Hubby and The Boy (it’s nice when they graduate together!). Hubby is now going to be wearing the blue uniform; The Boy will be getting geared up for his brown belt test. Everything went well during graduation – although it was awfully quick! I didn’t get my camera ready in time to tape them doing their kata, so I got to watch and enjoy it.
Then later that day….
The Boy had to go to a friend’s house to work on a school project. This is how well that went:
Yes, that is a sprained ankle, propped up on a pillow. He was playing football (he was forced to, you understand) and got tackled and pulled and stretched and twisted. We made him suffer through on Saturday, and then when it wasn’t feeling at all better on Sunday I made the family go to the emergency room and get xrays to make sure it wasn’t broken.
Now, I have broken my ankle (so badly that I needed pins inserted!) so I know that if it is broken he is going to be crying and be absolutely miserable until it is cast. I was pretty sure it wasn’t broken, but I wanted to make sure that there were no hairline fractures. Plus, if he was going to be on crutches, I wanted him to have a doctor’s note to make life easier at school.
So I ended up having to take him from his high school to his arts high school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. That wasn’t too bad. It was the picking him up on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday that really threw me for a loop. That sucked up so much time out of my day! And I hate driving in the city – I have no patience for it. So I was a bit cranky about it. But I knew that he would be more miserable on the crowded bus – and possibly hurt his ankle again if he got jostled around. It was only three days – so I could live with that.
Except…
his arts school had their prom on Thursday night. So, on the day I didn’t have to drive him to school, I had to drive him to his prom at the school. At pick him up. At 10 o’clock at night. In the city.
And then…
Friday rolls around and he is convinced I have run away with his black binder that has his school play in it. I, of course, have not. He can’t find it anywhere. I make him call his high school to see if it is in the lost and found there. It isn’t. The arts school is closed on Fridays and I know for a fact that no one is there that day. I can see him try to figure out how to convince me to go up there so he can look around. He offers that it may be in the building across the street where he takes his yoga class. I have him call; no answer. I have no pity (he must think, anyway). But I tell him to call again, this time after lunch hour, and he gets a receptionist. They do have a key to the room, so guess what? Yup, for the FIFTH day in a row, a drive to the city. He does find his binder (black binder on a black box – no one saw it there for 2 days!) and is happy as a clam (how happy are clams, anyway?).
So… I just have not felt like writing much, even though there is plenty to write about. And that’s just part of my exciting week or two off from posting.
Posted in Family Life, karate/tai chi, The Boy | Comments Off on Busy, Busy, Busy