Tag Archives: blog

Share Your World 6/26/17

Posted on by

What goal are you working on now?

Horribly embarrassing my children at least once a week.  This presents a greater challenge than usual in the summertime seeing as car rider lines provide ample daily opportunity to horrify them with riotous car dancing, but I’m doubling down.

What is one thing you’re glad you tried but would never do again?

Tennis.  We don’t speak of it.

Did you choose your profession or did it choose you?

My first profession chose me.  Teaching called me from a young age, though I don’t think I truly embraced it until my first year in college.  I’ve been choosing my professions since I left teaching.  It’s worked out pretty well so far.

Have you ever gotten lost?

Oh my, yes.  I have a particularly horrible sense of direction – none, really – and it’s gotten me into trouble more than once.  The most recent time was when I was driving T-man to a friend’s house on this tiny back country road, the kind where house numbers are hit or miss from the street.  We drove past his friend’s house three times before we managed to find the driveway.  Even my GPS couldn’t save me on that one.

Optional Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last week we went to my husband’s summer regional meeting in Myrtle.  I loved watching the kids reconnect with friends, make new ones, and enjoy the perks of being among the older kids.  Despite my health problems (stupid infection!) I think I laughed more at this regional than I have in years.  It was good times.

Bear’s at a camp that looks ah-maaa-zing this week – based at a nearby college, filled with cool learning opportunities, with a diverse group of kids.  T-man is enjoying basketball camp, so I’m grateful for quality dog time during the day and looking forward to traveling to someplace new this summer.

Cee’s Share Your World is a Monday treasure.

What’s happening in your world today?

Share Your World 6/19/17 (plus one)

Posted on by

Running a day late this week, but better late than never! 

What is something that people are obsessed with but you just don’t get the point of?

Fidget spinners.  Lord help me, but I cannot understand how these things have become so freaking prevalent.  I get they’d be useful for kids dealing with hyperactivity, but these things are everywhere.  I know several kids who own three, four, or five of them.  Then there are those youngsters whipping out the stopwatch to time their spinners so they can post their results on social media.  I mean, everyone sees these are just things spinning in a circle, right?

What quirky things do people do where you are from?

The “driving in the neighborhood” wave: four fingers peeled off the steering wheel for a passing car, hand lifted in greeting for neighbors in a yard.

Make sweet tea with enough sugar to keep a kid spinning for days.

Monogram anything that stands still long enough to be tagged.  Hats, shirts, car decals, pet sweaters, organizers, tote bags, travel cups – if it can fit three letters, you’ll find that super flowery script on it around here.

What are some things you wish you could unlearn? 

That wolf spiders carry up to 100 babies on their back, and if you step on them the spiders will scatter everywhere.  That spiders and ticks can climb vertical surfaces.  And that dead skin cells make up some crazy percentage of the dust in my house.  Eww.

Who is someone that you miss having in your life?

My mom.

Optional Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last week Bear had a great time at basketball camp and T-man enjoyed kicking back for his first official week of summer.  We let them have friends over on Friday night, and I’m grateful for the sound of riotous laughter coming from the back of the car on the way to and from the movies.  Nothing beats that kind of laughter.

This week hasn’t had the smoothest start, but I’m hopeful this antibiotic will clear my infection without making me feel too puny in the meantime.  I’m looking forward to getting away with the family for a few days and seeing friends I don’t see nearly enough.

Visit Cee’s blog for her weekly Share Your World post.

What’s happening in your world today?

Toblerones vs. babies – the struggle is real

Posted on by

Remember the thrill of moving around Life’s board?  Choosing a career, buying a house, getting surprised with twins (or triplets!)…you never knew what surprises lay in wait.  For those of you looking for a virtual game of Life, check out this Raquel D’Apice post on whether to have kids.

“Hi, I’m a woman in my late 20’s.  I’ve been married for 3 years but we fight a lot and it seems to be getting worse rather than better.  I felt like if I got pregnant it might help give our relationship an anchor—something we both love that would bring us closer together??  What should I do?

Solution:  EAT A TOBLERONE

Thanks for writing.  If you’re really worried about your relationship, a fun thing might be to eat a Toblerone Lady-and-the-Tramp style, each of you starting at one end of the Toblerone while you gaze into each other’s eyes and then later your partner could roll a separate Toblerone toward you with his nose?  (Hard though, because Toblerones are triangular and will not roll easily.)  Probably do not have a baby though, sorry!”

Should I Have a Baby or Eat a Toblerone? | The Ugly Volvo

Share Your World 6/12/17

Posted on by

What do you do when you’re not working? If you are retired, what do you do that is not part of your regular daytime routine?

Volunteer with elementary school students, snuggle up with the pups (okay, that might be routine), read novels, and take photographs.

What would you do if you won the lottery?

I’d pay off any outstanding loans, set up a local scholarship fund, and determine how best to donate to our K-12 schools.

What makes you laugh the most?

It’s usually something ridiculous, like a crazy joke one of us makes and then the giggles get contagious.  Before I know it the four of us are holding our stomachs, laughing madly.  Oh, and silly dog videos.

What is your biggest pet peeve with modern technology?

Glitches with the kids’ technology.  I’ve added two parental apps to their tech over the last six months – uKnowKids (for active monitoring) and Kidslox (for daily limits and lockdown hours).  One keeps causing iCloud to identify us as a security risk, forcing me to change passwords repeatedly.  The other keeps locking my kids out of wifi when they shouldn’t be.  We’re all a bit frustrated about this, especially considering these were supposed to make parenting a little easier.

Optional Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Our weekend plans shifted at the last minute and we ended up taking the kids to Great Wolf Lodge.  It turned out to be a lot of fun – good family time, and the kids have a lot more freedom now that they’re older so there was even some relaxing in there.

We’re into our first official week of summer.  I hope Bear enjoys her time at the basketball camp and that T-man kicks back.  Considering how late he slept today I think he’ll benefit from the week of downtime.

Cee’s weekly Share Your World is a Monday blog event.

What’s happening in your world today?

RFTM, interrupted, due to a minor life glitch

Posted on by

Life slid a bit sideways yesterday.

Sometimes those balls just get dropped.  You don’t even know you’ve done it until you’re halfway into your day and it strikes you like lightning – holy crap, I totally forgot to handle this.  The best you can hope for is that it isn’t for something life or death.  Thankfully, yesterday’s I-can’t-believe-I-dropped-that-one moment was more ridiculous than calamitous.  

As a result, though, our family’s gone off the grid for the weekend.  It’s kind of nice, actually, and a good way to celebrate our last baby’s graduation moving on to middle school.  I hope all of you have a wonderfully restful June weekend, and I’ll catch up with you soon.

Stay cool!

anticipation, that first circle of hell, and the never ending concert

Posted on by

In honor of winding up the school year (or having just finished, depending upon your luck), here’s a word from an epic school band parent.

“Phase I:  Excitement and anticipation.

Whether you child plays woodwinds, brass, or percussion (like mine), you will be excited to attend this important event, potentially the performance of a lifetime.  All year your child has been waking up early twice a week to get to band practice, instrument in tow.  Finally you get to hear the fruits of his labor!  You mark your calendar, rearrange appointments, and shuffle any competing extracurricular activities so that the whole family is available to be in attendance.  How often are you treated to a night of FREE musical entertainment, after all?”

The 10 phases of attending a school band concert | Screaming into my Pillow

SoCS – the almighty weather app

Posted on by

We are obsessed with the weather around here.  My kids are probably the only ones their age who religiously check the weather app before going to bed.  Try to get them to turn in for the night without their fix and there’s likely to be a riot on our hands.

What will the temperature be in the morning.  You wouldn’t think this would matter an awful lot since they’re going to be inside a building all day long, but it does.  Especially with T-man.  BrightSide gave him a cutoff (don’t ask me what it is, they keep changing it) for what the temperature needs to be for him to leave the house in shorts.  Lawdy, the uproar over shorts around here…it’s enough to drive a girl to drink mimosas espresso.

Whether it will be raining, and when, and for how long.  Bear rolls with this but T-man is an outdoors fella, so rain is a pretty big deal.  Rain ruins skateboarding plans.  And scooter time.  And basketball.  And whatever else those boys do when they’re hanging around in the driveway for hours at a time.  (No, they’re not drinking beer.)  Whether it’s gonna be a light shower that passes during school hours or a steady rain all day is the difference between a “YES!!” or a “awww, man” when the boy gets in my car after school.

T-man’s also oddly talented (well, I guess not oddly, it’s just a skill I don’t understand) at reading the skies.  Guess his fifth grade science teacher did an outstanding job because that kid can tell whether a storm is imminent or if it’s just a gloomy sky.  And he’s never wrong.  Never.  I have learned not to buck T-man’s predictions or I end up soaked in a shower.

Now that we’re heading into summer I suppose we’ll shift our obsession to temperature highs.  I’ve already seen my car heat to 100° as I sit in the car rider line.  (I’d like to say I delicately fan myself ala Scarlett O’Hara but in reality I’m mouth breathing as sweat soaks through my hair.)  I am particularly heat sensitive (as well as cold sensitive, ‘cuz I’m low maintenance like that) so I keep a close eye on summer weather.  Highs into the 90s or (ugh) 100 will land my butt firmly on our couch for the day, whether it pleases my kids or not.

When they get older they’re welcome to melt outside all they want.

Linda’s blog hosts a weekly Stream of Consciousness event.  This week’s prompt is “whether/weather.”

because sometimes you need a big belly laugh

Posted on by

This week has been full of adulting.  Life and such, you know.  I won’t bore you with the details.

Forever Family is on vacation today.  Instead, here are some links to check out (along with the most memorable hook from each).  Happy reading! 

I blame the rickets. – The Bloggess

“In an act of solidarity, Victor has decided to go on the diet with me, which seems incredibly sweet except that it seems crazy easy for him and he’s a dude so he basically doesn’t eat a sandwich for one afternoon and loses 87 pounds and becomes immortal.”

Per the TSA I’m a bread carrying, lock picking, weirdo… – But That’s For Another Blog

“It took everything in my power not to yell, “HOLY CRAP THAT LOOKS LIKE A BOMB!!”.”

5 Parenting Conversations I Am So Done With – ravishly

“But if I am holding an amber beer in my hand, I am not talking about naptimes.  If I hear shop from your lips, I am ordering you three more martinis and getting you shitfaced until you start solving the world’s problems based on this crazy theory you had when you were 22.  Then I’m driving your relaxed, adult ass back home.”

Ten things I REALLY want to do alone once in a while – Baby Sideburns

“I want to get dressed all by myself.

KID:  Beep beep beep, you are a robot.

A. I am NOT an F’ing robot.   B. Stop pressing my nipples. They are NOT buttons.”

The 33-Step Extremely Fun Board Game of Having a Second Child – The Ugly Volvo

“10.) Older child gets lice. Lose a turn. Pay $50 for lice shampoos and wire combs.

11.) You get lice. Lose a turn.

12.) You briefly thank your lucky stars that younger child does not have enough hair to get lice.  Advance one space!  YOU WILL WIN THIS GAME IF IT KILLS YOU AND OMG, THE GAME KILLING YOU LOOKS LIKE AN ACTUAL, REAL POSSIBILITY.“