Welcome to our little corner of the web. Grab a spot here by the fire. There’s plenty of room for your camp chair. There’s a cooler over by that Oak Tree, it’s filled with ice cold beer. The one by the Shag Bark Hickory – don’t they make you think of the Flappers from the 1920’s, with their fringe dresses? – anyway, that cooler is filled with soda pop. Plenty of flavors of both, so pick your brew. There’s also some iced tea in the drink cooler under the Maple, and the pot’s on the fire, percolating the coffee. Don’t worry, I didn’t let Joy make it ;-).
A fourth cooler, there by the Birch, holds hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, and shrimp, there are plenty of chips and condiments. There is also a little bit of fresh fish – I caught it this afternoon, and I’m happy to share. I’ve brought fixin’s for S’mores, the Whirly Pop is filled with popcorn and ready to go. And if it gets chilly, there’s a pile of blankets in the back of the truck. There’s no rain in the forecast, so we’ll be under a sunny sky, all day. And a starry one, if we decide to stay the night.
While you’re here, make yourself comfy. Unburden, tell a joke, vent. We’re friends here, and as long as you keep your language toward each other kind, you can say what you want. You can even swear, if you need to, but not at someone else.
Us Girls..Our Views 
LOL on the coffee!! I really want to be sitting in that camp chair. Beer and everything??? What more could you want?
We had a good weekend. We went to Jason and Nikki’s for a birthday party for Nikki’s niece Emily. I had a very good time getting out of the house.
Please pray for me. I have to spend the day taking my mom to a retina specialist. Please give me the strength to put up with her and hear how everything (almost) that I think, she thinks the opposite. She’s very scared though so she gets a free pass today. I’ll let her say (almost) anything and just nod and say uh-ha…….
Thank you for coming! It was a good day!
I couldn’t resist the coffee thing. Not after last week’s fiasco.
Joy, that’s the only thing you can do and keep your sanity – just “agree.” I have dealt with some very difficult people, and I learned to tell myself “I am a willow” and even “lose first” (my shorthand for “a soft word turneth away wrath”). If combative people find nobody is fighting them, they lose the desire to aggravate. They can still be ignorant, of course. Meanwhile, try very hard to apply your mind to something positive such as ways for you to feel better health-wise.
Good luck to your mom. I would be scared too.
This week has been really hard because of work. I did finally get a few installments of some of the projects out. That always feels really good. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The worst was up through Friday when I had a really hard time focusing enough to get a first draft done. This is really hard stuff, writing up a plan for what someone else is going to do, when I don’t know them and anyway they don’t know what I’m even talking about half of the time. It’s a competitive application (actually 7 of them) so it has to be the best I can do. I hope that I can now concentrate more fully. This weekend I did pretty well, but that could be because there was hardly anything going on in blogland . . . .
I have been reading a book by the Dalai Lama on how to become enlightened. It is not the most entertaining read, but it was a gift and I just want to get through it and move on. There is some interesting stuff in there, though. Some stuff that I can apply right now, if I can remember it when I’m stressed. Like, being aware that everyone is fundamentally the same as me and I should have the same compassion toward everyone regardless of whether they are a friend or an enemy. So basically, I need to feel love for Barack Obama. Now if I can do that . . . this reminds me – about 8 years ago I had the new colleague from Hell, “F,” and I remember telling my boss that my goal was to learn to love “F,” because once I achieved that, I would reach nirvana. So now I am saying the same thing about Obama. Apparently not much spiritual growth has happened in recent years.
Speaking of Obama, on a more serious level, I think I had a realization last week. I was reading some people’s forum posts about “RAD,” which I think stands for Reactive Attachment Disorder. It is a condition that sometimes occurs in kids who have had family disruptions in their lives (such as adoption after infancy). The underlying problem is a lack of trust in / attachment to main caregiver (mom or mom figure) which leads to an extreme need to be in control. It involves behaviors such as lying, charming people to get one’s way, insisting on telling others what to do even regarding things that shouldn’t objectively be that important to him, fighting for the appearance of control even if it means taking self-destructive actions, etc. Does any of this sound familiar? I am not even joking. Look at all the family disruptions that happened with Obama since he was a baby, and recall that he couldn’t stand his mother, didn’t visit her when she lay dying of cancer, and he had trouble with his granny too, and as far as I can tell he had no meaningful, positive relationship with any family member other than (we assume) his wife and kids. I totally think this guy has unresolved RAD and that is some really bad stuff. In case you didn’t already have enough reasons to fear leaving him with meaningful power one minute past November 2010.
So one of my kids seems to be doing better after last week’s illnesses, but the skinny one has had very little appetite for the past week or so. Yesterday she started having nosebleeds, one of them all over the floor at Old Navy. Life is never dull around here! Today she wanted to practice tying her shoes because she is pumped to be allowed to wear them to school. She didn’t technically do it all by herself, but she thought she did, and I hate the idea of disappointing her proud little self. So we will see how it goes in the morning, and if she mostly gets it, I’ll let her wear them. After all, her old shoes must be getting tight by now.
My friend’s Nephew 2 is coming to the US for a visit in mid-June. (Nephew 1 has been living with us since Christmas.) We will be working on a big deadline, but we are now planning a trip to DC and a few activities around our town. We never take it easy around here! I’ll be glad to take the girls to DC and show them around a little. But I am not so excited about the other stuff. I hate to be a stick in the mud, but dude, if I am going to take time away from work, I’d rather spend it doing stuff that is meaningful for me and my kids, or better yet, relax a little and take a real vacation after the Big Deadlines. But whatever. Can’t please everyone, right? Funny thing is, Nepew 2 says he’s mainly excited to come and see my kids, since he’s heard so much about how cute and fun they are. Unfortunately, my kids treat Nephew 1 like the plague, so I hope Nephew 2 has better luck.
Well, that’s all that comes to my rambling mind at the moment. So I hope everyone’s week is starting off well and continues to be productive and peaceful.
I’ve heard of RAD and I feel I know people who also have it. I always used to wonder why people did stuff like that. Now they have a name for everything.
I’d love to bring this up to my mom today but I just can’t do it 😦
OMG 2 words…Russell Crowe. heeeee!
or Robin Hood, take your pick.
Nope. Guy of Gisborne (Richard Armitage) all the way.
Well today I have daycare all day. So I’ll have to get off here soon. I normally only work afternoons, but the parents are having issues so I have her this morning also. It’s so nice, so we’ll be able to be outside. I have to run into town here in a bit to pay some bills.
I have to catch up on laundry and get all thew household chores done today. We have baseball scheduled for the next 5 out of 7 days, and I’ll be able to get nothing done!
The weekend was a good one. Like Joy said, we had a my nieces’ birthday party, and that turned out nice. After everyone left we put Avatar in, what a great movie. We’ve watched it twice now. Sunday was a low key day, got the camper cleaned and just putzed around the house. Sunday night we watched The History channel. Every Sunday they have a new episode of “America, The Story Of Us.”
Hope everyone has a good day! 🙂
I was wondering how you liked the movie.
Avatar? It’s wonderful! Long, but a great story. The colors and animation is incredible.
Our weekend was pretty quiet. Josh has been doing really well at school – he’s on a “smiley – straight face – frowny” rating system at school, and for a while, early this semester, he was bringing home nothing but frownies. So many that we had to use our “nuclear option” and take away ALL of his toys. Well, not only has he earned all of them back, he’s earned TWO straight weeks of smileys!! So proud of him! So we were inclined to say “yes” for some of the things he asked for.
Saturday, we spent a couple of hours at the park. I sat in the truck, oozing and sneezing and coughing and generally feeling like crap, but Josh and Steve got to go out and do some fishing and playing at the park.
I did have a “Bad Mom Moment” this weekend – I forgot the date, got a week behind, and totally missed a birthday party this weekend that Josh had been invited to. I felt soooo bad when I had to tell him that I screwed up, and caused him to miss the party. He took it well, hugged me and said, “it’s ok, mom, we all make mistakes.” What a great kid.
I’m feeling MUCH better today, most of the oozing and sneezing is gone, and only a little bit of the coughing remains.
“We all make mistakes.” How adorable. What a sweetheart.
Good job, Josh! Those frowny faces are always sad for us to see, but it sounds like he has had some real growth since then, so that is wonderful.
I get very little feedback from my kids’ teacher so I hope that means things are going fine. If I directly ask, I would probably get an answer, but part of me just wants to believe all is OK. Of course they have to have their ups and downs or they won’t mature, but I am never in the mood for a negative report. Bad mom! I do have the “advantage” of having my two little tattle-tales in the same classroom together, so if one does something horrible, I’ll probably hear about it from the other.
I still suffer a little shudder every time the phone rings during school hours. I keep waiting for the “other shoe” to drop – his teacher has NO PROBLEM calling home, if he needs it. And he’s needed it several times this year.
But, knock wood, I think he’s going through another little growth spurt, and learning to behave at school.
On the downside? My baby isn’t a baby anymore!!! sniff…sniffsniff…
That is really sweet out of the mouth of babes.”We all make mistakes”. That really made me smile. Joy do you make the coffee too strong or too weak? Just wondering. My week-end was Glorious. Spending time at the Cherry Blossom Festival and also doing some Spring chores. It turned out to be a wonderful balance of work and play. Dreams of camping just like Laura’s description. Campfire food and fun. I hope we can go camping sometime before the misquotes take over.
Love this post, and the pic that goes with it. It gets me in the mood for summer! As far as what I did this weekend…just posted about it on my blog.
Joy, hope all goes well with your mom.
did i just hear the fire pop? now i’m hungry for smores…
OK so back to my weird blogging habits. I mentioned last week that most of the blogs I visit involve special needs kids. Some of these are kids who were born with big medical and developmental problems, some progressive to the point where the child will likely or almost certainly die after losing all faculties. There is also a lot of suffering involved for the children, a huge amount of work for the families, and a huge cost as they make multiple trips weekly to the hospital, etc.
Meanwhile, these children are entitled to guaranteed government-paid education beginning as soon as it is discovered that they have a situation that will affect their ability to learn. So for many of these kids, from infancy, they have specialists coming to their homes multiple times per week to give them tutoring, speech therapy, occupational therapy, vision therapy, etc., etc., and at age 3 the local school system has to provide them with similar accommodations, while mainstreaming them with unimpaired peers as much as possible.
Now, I am not sure I would have been in favor of all this expense and inconvenience if it weren’t for reading these blogs regularly. These kids will never be doctors or astronauts. They will always be financially dependent and some of them will never even get out of diapers. But from an individual family’s perspective, that is not the point. The question for their parents is, will they be able to eventually sit at a table, hold a spoon and eat? Will they be able to feel comfortable being around other people even though they can’t do all the things most people can do? Will they learn to communicate their most basic needs? After all, as long as they are alive, shouldn’t they have a right to be as independent and happy as they can be?
This is one of the reasons I really appreciate the internet. Although in some ways it is impersonal, in other ways, it can really open up our eyes to how other people are motivated and affected by things. We had a conversation on this blog a while back about the word “retard.” But it was a lot different when I read similar postings on the blogs of families who are living chromosomal abnormalities every day. Those children are the absolute best “they” can be and they deserve just as much respect as anyone else, and their mothers make it their life’s work to see that they get it. I’ll go one step further and say that they are beautiful, once we learn how stop comparing them to the Gerber baby, and they are bright, once we realize that their minds are operating exactly as God designed them to operate.
I don’t know why I even wrote this comment but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. So there it is.
I did it!I bought myself a pair of Croc flip flops today.Just thought Id share that tidbit after Nikki’s great post the other day.They are comfy and Im sure Ill love em!Now Im off to get me some more of that wonderful sunshine while I toodle around in the yard!Have a great day everyone!!
Oh and Joy..I hope all went well for your mom!
Did another Miss USA candidate get screwed because of a conservative but very mainstream viewpoint?
The woman who got 2nd place answered with the majority but non-PC answer, regarding the new Arizona immigration law enforcement legislation.
The woman who got 1st reportedly tripped on her dress, but answered with a PC answer on whether birth control should be paid for with health insurance, saying “it’s just like every other medicine.” Which it isn’t, it’s a tool for a lifestyle choice, which for many people actually creates health problems rather than solving them. So are cigarettes; should health insurance cover them too? Sigh.
So anyhoo, I hope my daughters never feel the urge to either sell their souls or show off their butts in order to win such a contest.
Lost comment alert!
Nikki to the rescue!!!! 🙂
Good ol Nikki…….LOL!!!
I’m sorry I wasn’t home today to comment. It was a terribly long day and I’ll talk about it on Thrus.
Bummer, and I had all those profound, brilliant thoughts!
I hope you get some peaceful rest!
Sorry I’ve been missing these past few days… but I am finally catching up. I’ve been busy with work and have a friend come into town for her Bridal shower/Bachelorette party. So I didn’t have any time to check my blogs…. I’m still struggling to catch up with work… as I have a big deadline on Friday. Hopefully I’ll be back completely by next week and actually comment on a regular basis 🙂
I’ve missed you.