As a sane, rational, normal Mother I have always given my children sage advice for life.
For example:
If you sit that close to the TV, you'll go blind.
Do not play with fire OR ever light the school on fire again.
Do not put anything smaller than your elbow in your nose.
Don't play in the street and look both ways before you cross the street.
Especially for my son: Marry in haste, repent at HER leisure with your money.
These are just a few of the bits of wisdom I have dispensed during their growing up years, and since they left the nest I have continued to add to this collection every now and then with advice from the Mothership.
Not that I am bossy or anything, but the phrase "Didn't I tell you not to" has prefaced many a (clearing of throat here) short talk on whichever catastrophic consequence just befell them.
And so I went blithely along thinking all my children were well grounded and practicing safety and relative sanity since the wrath of Mom meant one of these "short talks" AND I certainly had all my bases covered.
I did not think I needed to say "Never jump out of an airplane".
Then Tobi went and jumped out of an airplane. With about 1 hours training. With her fellow Mother of small children cousin Jennifer. Here in Colorado. Wearing nothing but matching t-shirts and jeans.
(Has anyone here seen those blow up sumo wrestling suits?)
What in the world would possess a 29 year old mother of 2 to jump from a plane? I don't care if Brad Pitt and a million dollars was on the ground right below me for the taking, I just can not imagine doing it.
Now in her defense, she screamed like a little girl and had to be thrown out of the plane. This shows a level of sanity I have come to expect from someone with my upbringing under her belt.
So I am
OFFICIALLY
Saying it
NEVER JUMP OUT OF A PLANE.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Fare thee well to the blues
Today I smashed another PortKey on the way to work and wondered if I have a manic depressive disease as I giggled gleefully down the road. Yesterday was blue, today is ultra cheerful. Well, not exactly ultra cheerful but so much better it is opposite.
Every morning for the last 2 or so years I have smashed a blue Pepsi can with my car tire on the way to work under a double bridge. It is always in the same spot, before the first bridge about 2 feet out away from it. After the 1st year of this BD and I started making up stories about how it is a "PortKey" from Harry Potter and there is a Wizard using these Pepsi cans to get to the Dragon Hatchery every morning. The place is really a refinery and smells terrible, spouts flames, has a huge holding tank... If you've read HP, you get the point. Anyway, the can is missing every once in a while and I wonder if today will be the day my secret Pepsi dropper stops dropping his can in the same spot.
I can't imagine what possesses whoever it is to drop a pop can with the top facing the same way in almost the exact same spot every day. I used to think well here is where he finishes it on the way to work and so he tosses the can out. But every day? Facing the same way? Always a Pepsi can? For 2 years? It is not like this spot is convenient either. It is under a double bridge for trains so I know it can not be coming from above. It would roll and be in a different spot now and then if it was not being placed carefully since this is a road, not a basket.
I also saw a couple of squibs cleaning up all the flattened cans a couple of times. Actually they were very strangely dressed with a basket and collecting cans on a tiny little-known road under a bridge in Commerce City, but hey can collecting is a job now a days, isn't it?
Anyway now it is several days later, the blues are gone and it is a new week! Happy Birthday to Phoenix!
Every morning for the last 2 or so years I have smashed a blue Pepsi can with my car tire on the way to work under a double bridge. It is always in the same spot, before the first bridge about 2 feet out away from it. After the 1st year of this BD and I started making up stories about how it is a "PortKey" from Harry Potter and there is a Wizard using these Pepsi cans to get to the Dragon Hatchery every morning. The place is really a refinery and smells terrible, spouts flames, has a huge holding tank... If you've read HP, you get the point. Anyway, the can is missing every once in a while and I wonder if today will be the day my secret Pepsi dropper stops dropping his can in the same spot.
I can't imagine what possesses whoever it is to drop a pop can with the top facing the same way in almost the exact same spot every day. I used to think well here is where he finishes it on the way to work and so he tosses the can out. But every day? Facing the same way? Always a Pepsi can? For 2 years? It is not like this spot is convenient either. It is under a double bridge for trains so I know it can not be coming from above. It would roll and be in a different spot now and then if it was not being placed carefully since this is a road, not a basket.
I also saw a couple of squibs cleaning up all the flattened cans a couple of times. Actually they were very strangely dressed with a basket and collecting cans on a tiny little-known road under a bridge in Commerce City, but hey can collecting is a job now a days, isn't it?
Anyway now it is several days later, the blues are gone and it is a new week! Happy Birthday to Phoenix!
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Ode to a dear friend
Today I am fighting the battle with the blues
I am fine most of the time, but sometimes I slap my cheerfulness aside
and have a wallow in "poor poor pitiful me". The last few days have been like this. Wage cuts at work have crippled us financially. We can't go to movies, or eat out, or buy clothes...anymore. Since I am an hourly employee with NO vacation or paid time off I can not afford to take any time off work either. One of my co-workers had surgery and this is his 6th week of part time. After taking a couple weeks off to recover. Now here is the clincher.. He is going out tomorrow with his friends to lunch. I know what you are thinking: He can't exist for long on part time wages. No, he is salary so he is NOT being paid at the part time rate. He is being paid to be there all day whether or not he shows up. Every day at the end of my 9 hour day, when I did not even get to go to the bathroom without forwarding the phones to my cell, I think to myself "Well if I had a kidney removed, I would want people around me to pick up the slack also." Then today he announces he is going out to lunch with his buddies tomorrow. Like showing up at 10am and leaving at 2pm is not a slap in the face enough. He is going out partying tomorrow for probably his usual hour and 45 minutes.Come on guy. If you are well enough to slurp margaritas and Mexican food, you're well enough for work where you sit on a chair all day and type.
Now for the other source of my blues: my second job. Today my boss offered to let me and Brittany make some extra $. He wants us to clean a filthy warehouse with mouse doodoo, live rats, foxes, squirrels, and bugs, etc.. for $12.00 an hour. I mean OK it is cleaning and we already do clean the other place but I keep thinking the guy means to make up for the inequity in making someone take a pay cut who was already making way less than half what the others were making. AND working 2 jobs for him to make ends meet.
There is a guy at my work who makes over $30.00 per hour. My boss lets him have a company car and phone. This guy lies on his hours constantly and they let it slide. He refuses to come to work a lot and they let it slide. He breaks the rules a lot and they let it slide. Have I mentioned I do the payroll? This is an every week thing.
Screw it, I will go to work. I will do my fair share and the extra which has fallen on my lap. I will take my $11.90 per hour and eat hot dogs with the kids and attempt to be grateful. I am blessed. And I have 2 jobs.
I am fine most of the time, but sometimes I slap my cheerfulness aside
and have a wallow in "poor poor pitiful me". The last few days have been like this. Wage cuts at work have crippled us financially. We can't go to movies, or eat out, or buy clothes...anymore. Since I am an hourly employee with NO vacation or paid time off I can not afford to take any time off work either. One of my co-workers had surgery and this is his 6th week of part time. After taking a couple weeks off to recover. Now here is the clincher.. He is going out tomorrow with his friends to lunch. I know what you are thinking: He can't exist for long on part time wages. No, he is salary so he is NOT being paid at the part time rate. He is being paid to be there all day whether or not he shows up. Every day at the end of my 9 hour day, when I did not even get to go to the bathroom without forwarding the phones to my cell, I think to myself "Well if I had a kidney removed, I would want people around me to pick up the slack also." Then today he announces he is going out to lunch with his buddies tomorrow. Like showing up at 10am and leaving at 2pm is not a slap in the face enough. He is going out partying tomorrow for probably his usual hour and 45 minutes.Come on guy. If you are well enough to slurp margaritas and Mexican food, you're well enough for work where you sit on a chair all day and type.
Now for the other source of my blues: my second job. Today my boss offered to let me and Brittany make some extra $. He wants us to clean a filthy warehouse with mouse doodoo, live rats, foxes, squirrels, and bugs, etc.. for $12.00 an hour. I mean OK it is cleaning and we already do clean the other place but I keep thinking the guy means to make up for the inequity in making someone take a pay cut who was already making way less than half what the others were making. AND working 2 jobs for him to make ends meet.
There is a guy at my work who makes over $30.00 per hour. My boss lets him have a company car and phone. This guy lies on his hours constantly and they let it slide. He refuses to come to work a lot and they let it slide. He breaks the rules a lot and they let it slide. Have I mentioned I do the payroll? This is an every week thing.
Screw it, I will go to work. I will do my fair share and the extra which has fallen on my lap. I will take my $11.90 per hour and eat hot dogs with the kids and attempt to be grateful. I am blessed. And I have 2 jobs.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Don't give up, give over
These last few weeks have been icky. My workload is doubled, We have a flat tire, our second job is in Jeopardy, the fence is falling down, I got a flat tire Sunday, and the windshield will NOT last through the first snow we get. Joel is in Arachanidia or some such crappy place, Tobi is having a hard time, Needless to say we need help.
I am finishing this post, 2 days later:
Today Tobi bought me a windshield and a tire. Then Robert's family came and gave him some $, and he paid a bill for me. Needless to say I can see angels and blessings all around me tonight.
The world just keeps going even when you need it to stop for a minute and let you rest. Right now that world is going really fast. I forgot my shot this morning and had to take it to work with me. Then on the way home it got hot. I hope no damage was done. My workmate is STILL taking 1/2 days off every day. This is like week 5 or 6 since his surgery. Since he is salary, that's ok for him. Meanwhile I am so far behind I think I'm first and my boss just keeps looking at me like I have some sort of mental deficiency. I actually will be really suprized if I come out of the deal without one.
I am finishing this post, 2 days later:
Today Tobi bought me a windshield and a tire. Then Robert's family came and gave him some $, and he paid a bill for me. Needless to say I can see angels and blessings all around me tonight.
The world just keeps going even when you need it to stop for a minute and let you rest. Right now that world is going really fast. I forgot my shot this morning and had to take it to work with me. Then on the way home it got hot. I hope no damage was done. My workmate is STILL taking 1/2 days off every day. This is like week 5 or 6 since his surgery. Since he is salary, that's ok for him. Meanwhile I am so far behind I think I'm first and my boss just keeps looking at me like I have some sort of mental deficiency. I actually will be really suprized if I come out of the deal without one.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Job like existance
First gripe:
So, not one video to show for a month of owning a video camera. Just because you have it doesn't mean you have the brains to use it. (insert heavy sigh here). I blame Joel. Did he really have to take off in the middle of Warren's funeral? Just cause you are in the US Army and being deployed.
Hey, others of us have needs too! I wanted the wizard to whack his manly I.T. stick on the darn camera and show me how cool it can be taking video's of the kiddies.
I am too wary of the wrath of my daughters to ask one of them, and WAY too old to figure it out on my own.
No doubt part of this fear is bad memories of me learning to text. It was ugly. Not just bad looking, really home-made, stuck with this or nothing, beat with a stick ugly.
Job is losing this one, his sackcloth and ashes are all over my crappy red camera.
On to problem #2:
Sarah's darling Justinotherstark starts Kindergarten soon. That is the end of my grandbaby's. The wretched loins of my children have dried up at 10 grandkids. I was sooooo far ahead of those Wilkinsons till R. & J. had the quints. Now I'm eating the rear dust of this race and they have a lot more than me.
AND most of them are below preschool age. It sucks when your grand children are all growing up.
I feel like when my kids all ran away from home at 18 or in BD's case 21. All my little sources of joy are becoming little people.
Job may be winning on this one since I still get to see most of them weekly.
Problem #3:
Money. However NOBODY wants to hear this one cuz we are all poor.
So I have neither won or lost this pity party with the Prophet of old. Maybe I'll do blessings next.
So, not one video to show for a month of owning a video camera. Just because you have it doesn't mean you have the brains to use it. (insert heavy sigh here). I blame Joel. Did he really have to take off in the middle of Warren's funeral? Just cause you are in the US Army and being deployed.
Hey, others of us have needs too! I wanted the wizard to whack his manly I.T. stick on the darn camera and show me how cool it can be taking video's of the kiddies.
I am too wary of the wrath of my daughters to ask one of them, and WAY too old to figure it out on my own.
No doubt part of this fear is bad memories of me learning to text. It was ugly. Not just bad looking, really home-made, stuck with this or nothing, beat with a stick ugly.
Job is losing this one, his sackcloth and ashes are all over my crappy red camera.
On to problem #2:
Sarah's darling Justinotherstark starts Kindergarten soon. That is the end of my grandbaby's. The wretched loins of my children have dried up at 10 grandkids. I was sooooo far ahead of those Wilkinsons till R. & J. had the quints. Now I'm eating the rear dust of this race and they have a lot more than me.
AND most of them are below preschool age. It sucks when your grand children are all growing up.
I feel like when my kids all ran away from home at 18 or in BD's case 21. All my little sources of joy are becoming little people.
Job may be winning on this one since I still get to see most of them weekly.
Problem #3:
Money. However NOBODY wants to hear this one cuz we are all poor.
So I have neither won or lost this pity party with the Prophet of old. Maybe I'll do blessings next.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)