I want the basics.

Have you ever been so tired of your "life" that you just longed to figure out what you were here for??

There was a time when I believed I knew what I wanted...
-A career in radio where I could be the mid-day jock, in work after the kids left for school, home when they got home.
-------that was gone FAST when the reality of a career in radio was discovered after what, 21 years doing it? So the family/radio thing did not work out.

-The work from home mommy. I kind of fell into that one after MB was born. I was working overnights while DH was working days in the same doctor's office. I would bring MB to work, DH would take him home, hook him up to the dialysis machine and I would come home around 3am, crash on MB's bedroom floor with my hand through the crib slates so he would know I was there, ready to jump on any of the wild and numerous alarms that sounded through the night so DH could get a few hours of sleep....yadda yadda yadda, a transcription job fell in my lap. I had no training but showed aptitude (something I appear to have an abundance of...if people are willing to look).
--------that ended when I decided people were more important than work and lost my job while helping a sick friend...se la vie!

-The work out of the home mommy, but that's okay b/c MB is in school. Yeah, I can do this. I have been doing it very successfully...duh...see aptitude above. I can do ANYTHING....but where is the love...where is the joy. It AIN'T at work. LOL. (sorry grammaticarians...I had to do it....and I think I just made up a word to boot!)
--------it has not ended and, in fact, continues like it makes me happy. It's a paycheck. I enjoy what I do and the company is okay, but it is stressful.

so, what is my first love? What makes me happy?? Well, to some extent, writing, but I'm so insecure in my abilities that I don't think I have a chance with that unless I'm writing copy or something like that. So what else?

Food. No, not eating it, though that rocks when it's done right, but I love cooking good food!!
Tonight for dinner, I grilled steaks, make eggplant Parmesan and cooked butternut squash...and made fresh baked bread (I did not do that from scratch though, not a great baker, but a great cook indeed!).

The food was FANTASTIC. I had never made butternut squash before. I have not made eggplant Parmesan in YEARS and steak...well, get a good grill and that is easy peasy. Oh, also baked a potato for DH since he was scowling at me when he saw the eggplant and the squash!!!

I am not sure how to pursue this or if I want to. It's fun to prepare good food and make people, myself included, happy. Do I want to do this for a restaurant full of picky unappreciative people?

I am not sure. I am still exploring what I want to do when I grow up...since I'm 40, I better figure this out soon.

NO-Boma

I stand corrected. Thank you Adam.

I still think the man is not right for America. I followed up on Facebook....

I deleted the blog entry here.

Thanks again Adam.

I have never seen the righteous forsaken or His seed begging for Bread

Times are tough. Very tough right now. Finances are at an all time low around here. I wonder if the federal government will consider buying me out....no wait, I don't want them telling me how to spend my money. But I sure wouldn't mind a large severance package. Then I get money and a vacation. LOL.......

But I digress.

Things are tough around here financially. The fridge and pantry are virtually empty. Not completely momma, so don't panic. See, I'm hanging on to the words in the title there. God will supply all my NEEDS according to his Riches and Glory. Not MINE. It is not my righteousness, its His, by the way. It's HIS promise. It's His to deliver. For once, I don't have to worry, HE does not lie.

This Friday we got paid. We also got our first electric bill under $300. Thank God we can now open windows when we are home and reduce AC consumption dramatically. It's a little warm at times, but livable.

This Friday MB had to go to the doc (read unexpected co-pay). One of our cats was hit and died as well. I will miss him greatly, he was my favorite. I have to admit to you though that I was grateful he died, and we hope it was instantly, because that meant no vet bill. Then, was we were getting ready for our yard sale next weekend (please people show up and buy our toys and stuff!!) the kitten got a fishing hook caught in his paw. That reads something like this:

Fishing pole with locking hooks: $45
Kitten full of curiosity: about $25 per month in food and $15 in litter- $40
Emergency Vet visit to have fishing hook removed from bleeding paw - $200.
Having the Vet staff nickname your kitten "fish-hook": priceless......

Apparently he was the 4th one this week. Is everybody cleaning the basement? Oh, we also had him neutered (Bob Barker would be proud) and gave him his shots, feline leukemia test and feline AIDS test, worm test and whatever else little adopted stray kitties need. Happy to say he was sent home with pain killers and antibiotics. I have a stoned kitten.

Oh, we also went to Home Depot and got some really cheap ceiling fans to move the air in our sun room better so we can keep the air off and hopefully reduce heating bills in the winter as well. That was $75. (see, told you they were cheap).

So we got paid on Friday, and the bills are not paid, and the food is not purchased, and the money is leaking quickly.

I am STANDING on "I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor His seed begging for bread".

Brother can you spare a gallon....

Gasoline. Motor-go-go juice, the fluid that keeps America moving. Can somebody tell me where it has all gone? I KNOW we just had a hurricane move through Texas and we shut down oil production there for a few days...but COME ON. Wasn't that like a week or two ago (I lose track of time easily!). How about kicking those grasshoppers back into gear?

I dare you to try to find a gas station in the Nashville, Tennessee area with gas today. OH wait, there are a few. If you find them you will also find crazy lines like in the 70's when I was a kid and grandpa and grandma said "hey, lets go to the Phillips 76 fueling station and get some gas. Pack a picnic kids, we are gonna be there a while".

The panic must have begun early because by around 1pm I was hearing the buzz around the office start with "better fuel up this weekend...the government said there will be no gas for 5 days!" RIIiiiiiight. The entire country with no gas for 5 days. Listen to the environment sigh in relief and take a deep breath of fuel fume free air while everything "gas engine" stops for a work week. Um. I seriously doubt that. Yeah, in Nashvegas we have had runs on gas stations in the last week or so. Most stations are only selling cigarettes, cold beer, soda and chips right now, but a few are cashing in with the precious petrol! I'm actually proud of them. The 2 places I saw that actually had open pumps were only selling it for $3.99 a gallon and $3.91 a gallon. Still ridiculously high, but more reasonable than last week. Unfortunately, the lines for those pumps bordered on the Chicago Loop at rush hour. ... long and stopped. The local Wally World has pumps, and gas, for 3.91 per gallon....and lines that snaked up and down every Super parking lot path, literally, and into the lot and around the Blockbuster and and and.....seriously, even if they limited gas to 5 gallons per person, they still would run out before everybody was served. This is pathetic.

P a t h e t i c.

I'm half tempted to sit in on the panic buying as one vehicle has 1/4 tank and the other has about 1/2 tank of gas and we have church, work and school next week to think about...not to mention grocery shopping and hubby's birthday celebration. Oh, and we have the older boys this weekend, so another trip to the other side of town to drop them off.

So, fine, American Government, Oil barons in Texas and all the Oil Mongers we are overpaying in the Middle East, how about a few truckies with some gasoline in them head to Tennessee and soon before there is a real problem...not just panic buying, crazy lines and angry people reminiscent of the 70's- when people at least had mary-jane to mellow them out.

School, and all the other little things that make you gray!!

We are half way through the first semester of school already. Seriously. Scary and serious. MB starting off with a BANG!!! Out of the gate, lots of A's. I am so happy for him that we started the "A clip" on the fridge. Basically, if he gets an A of any kind it goes on a magnetic clip on the fridge. You see, I do this because MB is a bit "high drama". If you know him or me or my husband at all you know it's true and you know where he gets it from. Not pointing fingers, draw your own conclusions. LOL.

Anyway, MB can get really down on himself when he gets a bad grade, so I continually refer him to his A-clip. Hooray for mommy....I'm such a good mommy...pats for the mommy......

Until 2 weeks ago when MB brought home his first official F. Yeah, I said F. FAILED FREAKED FRACTURED non-FUNCTIONING EEEEEEEFFFFFFFfffffff. Mommy is a failure. My world collapsed. My boy got his first F. In my attempts to not over-react, I grounded him, took away TV privileges and cried for hours on the sofa lamenting his F and my obvious failure as a parent.

Well, no. I really didn't do ALL of that. I did do some of it and I will not tell you which thankyouverymuch. So now I am on a Perfect Mommy quest to find ways to help this child not flunk first grade and permanently harm his educational reputation. How will he ever get into an Ivy League school if he flunks out of first grade. It's truly the end of his educational prowess isn't it.

His teacher is a sweet lady, who I am beginning to appreciate more and more. She is willing to give him special spelling tests because I am beginning to believe he may be dyslexic because of the way he gets them wrong. But apparently they do not test for that till third grade. I wonder why.

Well, we brought home a D last week...essentially KILLING his A that he earned on everything in the first half of the semester. Somebody help me with ideas on how to help this kid. His teacher gave us a GREAT website called spellingcity to type in his words and let him play with them (www.spellingcity.com) check it out. I like some (but not all) of them. The hang mouse is good and pick the missing letter...but the mixed up word has extra letters, not good when we are already adding extra e's to everything.

So, mommy is trying to lick her wounds and get over baby not being as eager in school as she always was as a kid and MB is trying to work harder and hopefully smarter. We have made a few adjustments to schedules like no TV on school nights and no more Spongebob or Fairly Odd Parents or just plain old mind numbing TV shows. It's gotta educate in some way. He can watch PBS and he can watch Dora for all I care, but no more mind numbing gahhhahhahahaaaa or Squidward.

I wonder if we can undo the damage we have allowed. Lets reharness that love of books and nature and all things wonderful and educational.

I was serious about the ideas people.

WONDER WART STICK!!

Does the title intrigue you? If you or a loved one has a wart, it should.

MB is immunosuppressed. Basically, we like having him around and with that kidney transplant, there are lots of immune suppressing medications so his cute little body does not turn on the pink fluffy kidney daddy gave him 6 years ago.

That being said, lots of uglies like to pop up on said cute little body. The Molloscum Contagiousum (sounds like a Harry Potter spell doesn't it) is still struggling to stay in place, though I think after 2 years of this pain in the neck are about over. We are on an experimental medication that seems to finally be working after we tried so many others. We have to be careful nothing processes in through the kidney so we don't hurt it. So that battle is leaning toward our side FINALLY.

So, we realize, in holding MB hands, that they are covered .. COVERED.. in warts. I kid you not. One poor little sweet finger had 5 warts on ONE FINGER. He had a total of 17 or 18 on his hands. Poor kid.

So we see the dermatologist who prescribed the meds for his MC and he says "there is this wart stick, you can get it over the counter at any pharmacy. It looks like chapstick, but it's acid. Get it and some duct tape."

Yeah, I said duct tape, we got florescent green just to make MB happy with the color choice.

Well, we found this lovely wart stick (and that is it's proper name, btw, Wart Stick). We soaked MB's hands in warm water, took a nail file and filed down the head a bit, rubbed in the Wart Stick, and duct taped over his warts.

I am the happiest momma ever. In just 2 weeks ALL, every single one, none remain....yeah I am not kidding there are no warts on MB's hands. There is some slight scaring from his mommy over filing ......but seriously....he has nice beautiful smooth omgicanholdhishandforever hands again.

So I told a friend and she said I owed it to the general public to tell you about the Wart Stick.

You have been told.

Here are the directions to get rid of the warty warts one more time:

1. Soak hands for 5 min in warm water
2. file down head of wart (this should not hurt. If it does, you too are being a little too hard on the hand/arm/toe....wart area). Use cheap nail files and THROW THEM AWAY nightly so nobody accidentally gets warty warts.
3. Rub a little Wart Stick on the warts.
4. Tape the wart with duct tape so it can't breath and you drive the acid in to the wart.
5. The next morning, take tape off and SCRUB area with soap and water.

Now the precautions part:
Please Please Please Please please (get the seriousness of this yet) DO NOT put wart stick on your lips, on your eyes, on any mucous membrane. IT WILL BURN YOU BADLY. DO NOT attempt to eat the wart stick (it does not stink, but it does not smell like something you want to eat either).
Do NOT leave wart stick where your pets can eat it.
Please do not use on little children or ill people without first consulting your doc to be sure it is okay. Nobody wants a wart, but nobody really wants to hurt somebody they love.

Wart Stick...check it out if you have a frog bump *wink*

I have been tagged by Tamwill

Five Habits Meme

What was I doing 10 years ago?
I was working in a radio station in Champaign, Illinois, was music director, mid day announcer, everything I thought I wanted.

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non-weight gaining world:
CHOCOLATE, Starbucks coffee, candy, cheese and ice cream.

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world:
popcorn, coffee, fruit, cheese, tea

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Hire a trainer/cook
pay off houses for all of my family and a few friends
start a scholarship fund for average students
give money away
stop in a gas station and pay for everybody's gas for 1 day.

Five jobs I have had:
Radio Announcer
EDI specialist for medical claims
Clerk in a CPAs office
pizza cook
survey taker

Five habits:
must have coffee in the morning but tea in afternoon
getting up 30 mintues before everybody to be alone
watching too much tv
fixing dinner on the fly
hating housework

Five places I have lived:
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
Champaign, Illinois
Nashville, Tennessee
DeKalb, Illinois
Hazel Crest, Illinois

Five people I’d like to get to know better:\
Candice
my french fried friend
evercurious
Military wife and mom
Morganboborganfefiforganmorrrrrrgan

and anybody who wants to answer :)