Easy to Love

After a particularly rough morning with E, this really lightened my heart when it came up in my Facebook news feed:

The kids had a four day weekend for Easter, and this is always the kiss of death for E. He does not deal with change well, nor does he transition well back into routine. He cried, argued and carried on all morning. He kept asking why he even has to go to school, and then made his case for taking Amy (the hamster) to school with him. He even carried her cage to the door. I had to take her from him and put her back, try not to lose my patience with him and get him even more upset before I had to drop him off. I emailed his teacher and guidance counselor to give them a heads up. No phone calls yet, so I'm praying that his day is going okay.
I had a meeting with our lead pastor this morning and he mentioned the book, Shepherding a Child's Heart. I have a long list of books I want to read, but I may move this one to the front of the list if it seems like it could help E survive to adulthood.

UPDATE: The school never called, and I found myself checking my phone all day to see if I had missed their call. When I picked E up from school he was in a good mood. I asked him how his day was, and he said that it had started out bad, but that he had turned it around. I was so proud of him, that I un-grounded him. I want to reinforce how important it is that you can always start over. This was big for him, and I'm so pleased!

Graph Jam

While waiting for the commercials to come on during the Super Bowl (since that's really all I watch), I entertained myself by making my very first pie chart for GraphJam.com:

Harper

I'm still loving our new pup. Mostly. She is still cute and docile and sweet, but I think I'm finally on to her game. She pretty much does what she wants, and I'm starting to think that she believes she is feline with the level of ignoring that's going on.

First thing in the morning when I call her to go out, she is all joy and ear-flapping, and trots right out there. By night time however, she's kind of like the Man after a long day of work: dragging around, creaky. I call her to go out, no response. I call her again, and I see maybe an eyeball flitter. I repeat my half of this dance endlessly, and she rotates between looking bored, and digging further into the couch. I then walk over to her, my voice growing ever higher pitched, as I attempt to convince her that going outside to pee in 14 degree weather is, in fact, a really super fun idea. She of course does not buy this, but does raise her head enough to indicate that petting would be acceptable now.

I then take her by the collar (gently, I swear) and attempt to lead her (read: drag) from the couch. This is where her Gandhi skills emerge, as she flops to her side in a passive aggressive stance. No amount of squeakyness on my part will prompt her to get up and walk to the door. I give up, pick the tiny thing up and go plop her out the door.

If that was painful to read, then take heart, because you got the easy part. This process being repeated every night is so stinking ex.as.per.ating. On another note, we've changed her name from Phoebe to Harper. I'm no longer worried about confusing her with this change, because she clearly could care less how we address her, so long as she doesn't have to move. And when it comes to cool pet names, I think Harper is the cat's pajamas of beagle names. (See what I did there?) My literary nerd euphoria was short-lived, however, when the Princess said, "Oh cool, Harper! Just like on Wizards of Waverly Place!" (Why yes, I did just die a little inside, thanks for asking.)

Phoebe

We got a new dog! Squee!

Her name is Phoebe, and she's a 6½ year old beagle. We got her from the West Jersey Volunteers for Animals, and she was originally a rescue from a shelter in the city. She is incredibly docile & sweet, and so far is getting along fine with Lucy. We wanted Lucy to have a companion, and Phoebe seems like a great choice.

*disclaimer* That is NOT our bed in that picture, that's a picture the foster mom took. My bed is always MADE, thankyouverymuch.

Fish Ramblings

The Princess woke me up this morning to inform me that the Tyrant had fed the fish. A lot. Apparently he pulled the piano bench over to the tank and dumped half a jar of flakes in there. The fish have since gone crazy gorging themselves, and I expect the requests for Pepto will soon come in. This could be a good thing, who knows, since the big Jack Dempsey has been eating the little fish lately. Maybe they'll be safe for a day if he took part in the feast, though he normally eats different food made for the cichlids. We should have guessed by his name that this fish would be aggressive towards our little guppies, but the Man has said he would rather keep the big fish than the little ones anyway, so I guess we're letting natural selection take over the tank.

Did I mention that I'm not a morning person?

I have a feeling that this morning is one of those times that I will be able to laugh about later, but am too annoyed to find the humor just yet. I woke up to the sound of the Tyrant banging the toilet seat closed repeatedly. Not sure why, but when I got up to check on him, he grinned at me, and said, 'GOOD MORNING MOMMAY!' He was wearing nothing but a diaper, don't know where he left his PJs. I then proceeded to the living room, following him as he reported to me on the dog's activities. Apparently he wanted to use the dog biscuit container as a garage for all of his 412 matchbox cars, so he dumped the biscuits on the rug. There weren't too many left, so I would imagine that my 19 pound beagle had quite a full belly. If I wasn't sure of this, it was confirmed by the Great Dane sized poo that she left in my office and the guilty look on her face. I'm so ready to go back to bed.

Lucy, you gots some splainin' to do....

We have a new member of the family! Meet Lucy, our 11 week old beagle pup.


For a long time the Man and I have joked about how he is a dog person and I am not. We had agreed that someday when the kids were older, we would consider a dog, but I was not in any rush to have another 'kid' to take care of. At some point last year I came to the realization that someday would probably be here sooner than I thought, and that I needed to start changing my mindset about dogs. As a kid I liked and even wanted a dog, but at some point I just started disliking everything about them. The smell, the hair, the slobber, the poop that the neighbor's dog left in my yard, and last but not least the incessant annoying barking of dogs left outside early in the morning and late at night. I knew that I would have to get over all of this at some point if I wanted to give my husband this desire of his heart. So I started praying and asking God to change my heart towards dogs.
Well, God has a sense of humor as we all know, because not only did He start showing me all the great things about dogs, but He showed me that I really did want one! Suddenly I found myself petting the dogs of strangers and chuckling to myself when the neighbor dog woke me early in the morning. I thought it must be a fluke or hormones or something, but my Twilight Zone experience kept on. So for the last month or so I began praying that if God really wanted us to have a dog, that He would drop the right one on our doorstep.
I consulted my best friend, and asked her opinion. I thought she of all people, being a busy mom too, would help me to see what a bad idea this was. Instead, much to my surprise, she encouraged me to go for it. She said that in a few years, the Tyrant will be in school and I may go back to work full time. Being a stay at home mom now, I have more time to devote to training a dog. I had to admit she had a good point. I confessed my secret love to my husband, much to his delight.
I continued to pray for the perfect dog for our family, and for Him to help us do this financially. We saw an English Bulldog in a petstore that was really sweet, but choked on her $1300 price tag. We checked out some local adoption agencies that foster dogs, but most wanted $250 to adopt even a stray mutt.
All this time we were also keeping an eye on Craig's List, which is where we had found our cat a few years ago. The Man found a beagle pup listed, and I realized what a great choice she could be: not too big, short hair, sweet temperament. We contacted the man and before we knew it, she was here! He had bought her from a pet store but had realized later that he just did not have the time to train her or spend with her. He only wanted $100 for her, which is amazing! He also gave us her food dishes, collar & leash, food and two crates. I don't know why I'm surprised when God answers our prayers, but wow! What amazing answers He gave us! Lucy is a sweet little thing, although naughty in only that way that puppies are. We are totally in love!

So, we're felons, apparently

Over the summer we acquired a fish tank, and a co-worker of the Man had given us some snails. He had too many, and they're good for keeping the tank clean, so we were happy to take them. To me they were just brown snails, and other than the fact that they did keep reproducing and filling the tank with more tiny brown snails, I took little notice of them.

The United States Department of Agriculture however, is mighty interested in them. Yesterday morning the Man got a call from said co-worker, informing us that these snails, that he had originally bought on eBay, were now being confiscated by the government. They are some sort of ramshorn snail, and for some reason we aren't allowed to keep them. The Man bagged them up last night to go turn them over. The only info I've found seems to be that the USDA has issues with controlling their population in commercial fish ponds, though I'm not at all clear what that has to do with us.

The irony of having to turn over aquarium snails to the government isn't lost on me. Of all the illegal things I did in my previous life, possession of contraband slugs sure never made the list.

Just Keep Swimming

Where did my blog list go?? It's there when I go to edit the template, but I can't see it on the page. I'm annoyed because that's how I go read other blogs. Foo.

Well I'm off to the camper in a few hours, and I'm only taking the Boy. The Princess is away at church camp until tomorrow and the Barnacle is staying home with the Man. It's the de-barnacling of the Barnacle you could say. It will be the first time that he and I are apart for more than a few hours, so we'll see how he does.

We have some new pets here, six little fish. I asked the Man what kind they are. "Cheap starter fish." he replied. They are teeny and greyish and that's the extent of our knowledge apparently. The Boy named them (not sure how the Princess was so gracious about this) and now they are called Nemo, The Boy, and Hot Wheels 1 through 4.

We had talked every once in a while about getting fish for the kids but nothing ever came of it. Then out of nowhere, the Man gleefully arrived home a week or so ago with a tank, rocks, filter, plants, fish food, plastic castle and so forth. We had new neighbors move in up the street and they put the whole kit and caboodle at the curb the first day. Guess they were tired of it or their fishies were lost in transit. Either way, we are shameless curb shoppers in this family, so home it came to be cleaned and refilled, much to the joy of our children. The only thing we needed to replace was the lid for the tank, as it was cracked.

The first night the fish were with us the Man and I were watching tv and I discovered something fantastic. The sound of the water falling into the tank from the filter could not be drowned out enough by the tv to prevent my body from constantly needing to pee. The Man promised to fix the lid or replace it. The next night the cracked lid was temporarily taped and in place and I could relax without any pressing bathroom needs. It was sometime later in our evening that we heard a loud noise come from the kitchen. The Man had just been walking into the room when one very wet and FREAKING OUT kitty came flying across the kitchen counter, crashed into the fridge and tore up the stairs. Apparently sitting his fat rump on the cracked lid was not a good idea, and he got a closer view than he had planned.

The fish won't talk about the incident but I have a feeling that Hot Wheels 3 is holding a grudge. He keeps giving the cat a fish-eye. (I know, worst pun ever, hahahaha)

Dog People

So I'm fussing about today and editing and arranging things here, and I discovered that according to my Profile, I am in fact in the Accounting field! Imagine my surprise and delight! I had no idea that I was so smart with numbers. But being a person who is required to subscribe to rigorous honesty, I went and found the list of occupations so I could correct this. However, much to my rigorous annoyance, homemaking is not on the list. So I was torn with choosing between Agriculture and Law Enforcement. Somehow they both seem oddly fitting. I settled on Education in the end which seems fair enough.

I could also be some sort of animal wrangler I think. Or observer. Or annoyee. (is that a word?) I am an expert at being woken up at all hours by the neighbor's lobotomized mutt who barks at Every. Living. Thing. It's barking RIGHT NOW in fact. I confess that I am not a dog person by nature and I mostly just find them dirty and hairy and slobbery, and I get enough of these qualities from my children. But the sad reality is that dogs are a lesser evil in comparison to dog people. Dog people who think nothing of leaving their dog outside to bark at 11pm and 7am. Dog people who think nothing of letting their dog leave a large steaming deposit on my front yard and then scooping it up with a plastic grocery bag, as if somehow that makes it ok for your canine to defecate on my lawn. I'd like to see how they'd react if I sent my 5 year old over with his own fertilizer. Note to dog people - it's disgusting and offensive even if you clean it up with your baggie. Nothing will make it ok for you to allow your animal to POOP IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE. (I'm not yelling, somehow the capital letters are meant to convey my utter disgust.)

I do like some dogs though, lest anyone brand me a hater or PETA come with their torches. The Man's aunt has a spaniel that is an absolute gem and so very sweet. If all dogs were like her, and all dog owner's like the Man's aunt, my worldview of doggies would certainly improve. I think my overall frustration is the lack of concern in the universe for how one's actions affect the people around you. Put yourself in someone else's shoes the next time you walk your dog, or honk your horn, or grouse at a cashier. It's not so hard to be considerate and HUMAN.

*NOTE* The author is familiar with plenty of lovely and considerate dog people (including her own husband who is a mystery to her and who will live dog-less until the kids are grown) and this rant is mostly focused on two families in her neighborhood that do not comply with the normal standards adopted by humanity. It is by no means meant to be a slam at the dog community at large.

The very first blog

Well here it be. I have wanted a blog for a while now, but kept thinking that I didn't need one. And I don't really, as I have a family web site where I gabble on about all of our comings and goings, and I have MySpace to keep in touch with friends and use adolescent sparkly graphics. So I really don't need a blog, another thing to keep up with and fuss over. Maybe it's an early Christmas present to myself. Maybe it's where I can *really* let my hair down. Maybe I just don't need a reason?? Maybe I'm too lazy to find my journal file on my old computer?

It's Christmas Eve. The kids and I are all still in our jammies. We put together and decorated the gingerbread house today. The Man did most of the work with them, and then I helped use up the last of the bag of toothpastey icing. Got lots of icing on our hands and into our mouths, mmm. The tree looks festive, with most of the ornaments hanging the requisite 30 inches from the ground, to protect them from the Barnacle's little hands. The cat keeps drinking the water out of the pot thinger and the Man and the kids take turns swatting him. I gave up; like I really need someone else to yell at about something fruitless, as we all know he can just climb under there and suck it all up while we sleep. Much like he comes and lays his bum on my countertops when I'm not there to throw things at him. It's a futile fight to disagree with a kitty.
We'll go to church at 7pm tonight, and the kids will sing - well, the Princess will sing anyway, the Boy isn't interested in the stage, whether for lack of interest or courage we don't know. It's always noisy at that 'family' service since there's no nursery coverage and the toddlers don't know what to do with themselves. The paparazzi (read: mothers with video cameras) will do their best to sit on the aisle near the front to get barely lit footage of their child. I love our church videos, even if they are so hard to see. :)
Welp, off to run bath water and get us moving. More later.

*note* all the entries before this date were transferred from elsewhere.