I am putting off doing one of my least favorite jobs as a mom. I need to give Jane some cough medicine, but she won’t take it. She fought with me last night, and finally threw it up. It takes a lot of work to toss up 1/4 t of cough medicine. As I type, she is muffling her cough in her blankets so I won’t hear her. She has never like medicine, and has puked up more than her share. Bribing with chocolate won’t help, and she won’t drink tea with honey either. I don’t want to offend anyone, but I think she is Christian Scientist…Maybe I will try a cough drop this time.
January 27, 2009
Uncategorized daily life 6 Comments
I wrote a letter to a prisoner today. I have never done that before, I have never known anyone in jail before. My friend did something colossally stupid. While he can probably plea this down, it will still follow him forever. So what do you write to a prisoner? Turns out not much. I didn’t ask any questions or pass judgement. Right now, he just needs a friend. I just wrote a short newsy letter. I thought about every topic, and how it would feel to read that behind bars. None of it felt very good, but I will send it tomorrow anyway. I am including a book too. I doubt he reads much, but I am guessing he might get tired of tv. I might even hunt down a Sudoku book too. Those things are kind of addictive.
Paul still crawls everywhere. He will take maybe three steps now, but he is hell-on-wheels with the baby walker thing. He will probably start walking when GD and I are on our vacation in early Feb. Speaking of GD, he has been busy. A couple of weeks ago, he went to school with Jane for show-and-tell on D day, as in Dad. Two days later he was eating lunch with the kindergartners right before show-and-tell on… shall we call it “G” day. He liked school lunch, and was appalled at what the little kids throw out.
I have been following through on my resolutions so far, mostly. I am still on schedule with the Daily Bible thing, and I have read and returned several books the owners had surely given up on. I believe I still have four books borrowed. This does not count Out of Africa. That would be five. Most of these books are of the self help variety, and while I undoubtedly need to help myself, a person can only become so good. I have books on how to have a good marriage, how to handle difficult people (two of those), and how to look at yourself through God’s eyes.
I am not doing as well on the excercising part.
Good night.
Has it really been that long?
January 18, 2009
Uncategorized high school 4 Comments
My twentieth high school reunion is coming up this year. I am in touch annually with four of the nearly 200 classmates I had. That is about right for me. Someone found me on Facebook a few months ago, and I have heard from several others since then including a guy I have no memory of, but I guess I went to school with him.
I don’t use Facebook much. I look at it from time to time, but I don’t really use it to communicate with anyone. There is just too much “stuff” there, I am always worried I will get a virus when someone blings me or whatever. Anyway, back to my story.
The person who found me is someone I would call a doctor’s kid. Her dad might not have been a doctor, but she definitely belonged to the country club set. She would not have given me the time of day 20 years ago, and I would have avoided her if at all possible. I am probably still a little offended from our last reunion. I found out about it two weeks ahead of time. “We didn’t know where to find you,” she said. Well, my mom still works in the high school library, how hard did you try?
Come to find out this gal is sick, as in probably deathly sick. She posted a tongue-in-cheek something along the lines of “if I ever said something nasty to you, please forgive me so I can get over this disease” on her Facebook page. Even in my darkest thoughts I never would wish that on anyone. She is approaching her illness with humor, which has to help, but she is really sick. I feel bad for her, I really do, but my only memories of her are the haughty snotty girl she was in high school. I need to work on changing my perspective.
It is not easy to put away those old sentiments, the intense feelings and memories about the people who disdained you in high school. Now they act like we were one big happy class. (Obviously they went to a different high school.) It would probably be easier if I lived in town and saw them more than once every ten years. I am kind of looking forward to the reunion, not so I can re-connect with anyone, but I am interested to see where people ended up. At the last reunion I kept getting mixed up because most of the doctor’s daughters had Princess Di haircuts. I wish they would have kept their same hair styles and colors. I guess that is why we get nametags.
Another unsolved mystery
January 12, 2009
Uncategorized Leo, parenting 1 Comment
We broke through a wall today. We have been pushing against it for over a month. Leo is potty training. We have learned that if he is naked from the waist down, he uses the potty. If he is wearing cotton training pants, Bob the Builder big-boy underwear, a pull-up or even just pants, he will tinkle in them. When a guy stopped to ask if he could hunt on the place across the road from us, Leo was running around in the livingroom with just a tee-shirt and socks on.
I decided to give up on diapers entirely this weekend, so I have been traveling with a spare pair of training pants, socks, pants and plastic bag. Today, Leo came to me and announced that he had to tinkle, and sure enough, he pulled down his training pants and proceeded to pee all over the underside of the toilet seat. Seriously, how do they tinkle up when the darn thing is pointed down? We even had a floating Cheerio for a target! We will have to get some training on aiming.
Okay, as I was looking for a funny book to put on my Xangazon thing, (and I did find one…although I am left wondering what exactly is under the flaps) I noted that they have 408 books on potty training. *Note to self, don’t try to publish a potty training book any time soon.
It is about time I wrote something
January 10, 2009
Uncategorized books 4 Comments
Well, it has been quite a long time between blogs for me here. Tonight I actually went on a date with GD. We had Mongolian grill then watched Valkyrie. (We never go to the mall theater, except for tonight. The prices are shameless and buying refreshments is like being held up in the alley. Our downtown theater charges $3.5 for adults and $3 buys a huge popcorn, drinks start at $1.) We were watching a commercial on TV earlier in the evening, and I said, “That music is ‘Ride of the Valkyries’.” I love being right! The babysitter even cleaned up the kitchen. Life is good.
I have discovered a new mystery series to love. C.J. Box. He (or she) writes about north central Wyoming. The protagonist is a game warden who seems to get into all kinds of trouble. I don’t know for sure what I like so much, I know I like the attention to detail he puts into the scene. The characters step out of the page. I like that I feel familiar with the landscape. The author’s description of the small town is fantastic. Having lived in a town just like Saddlestring, it is like reading about home, I think I even know some of the characters.
Probably people who live in New Jersey feel the same way about Stephanie Plum, or maybe not. Another author I like a lot is Lisa Wingate. I just read another book of hers. Her books are all related to each other, vaguely, but you don’t have to read them in order to understand things. They are also about a rural area near here.
I am trying to read the Bible all the way through this year. As much as I read, it is a shame I have not read all of it by now. This thing has me hopping all over the Bible, so that is kind of fun.
I just wanted to say hello.
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