Thoughts, Beauty, and Pirates

I'm sitting here watching my wonderful hubby browse through each and every station getting the latest election coverage. Personally, I don't really care who wins. I did vote; I did my civic duty; I cast my vote for who I thought to be the lesser of two evils. That being said – the state of my life doesn't hinge upon who sits in the Oval Office. My tomorrow will look the same as my today, no matter who wins because my life is governed by a higher power.

This past weekend was not only Halloween, but it was Homecoming for my girls' high school. Only Kate went this year. She was beautiful! As a mom, sometimes I am so proud of my girls for no other reason than they live and breathe. Sometimes I am proud of what young ladies they are turning into. And sometimes, like this weekend, I am proud that they are beautiful on top of everything else.

The other two went trick or treating around the neighborhood. One as a renaissance princess and the other as a pirate. LOL. A pirate who isn't used to wearing dresses and kept hitching up her drawers all night long.

1000 Words

Riding the Roads

Kate has been strongly hinting (okay, outright begging and pleading) for Driver's Ed classes. She's 15 and itching to be mobile. I have never personally been in the car with her, but my wonderful hubby and my dad have let her drive a few times in controlled situations. So last night, as we are pulling to our driveway, she asks if she can drive me around the block. Taking both of us totally by surprise, I said okay, pulled over and let her behind the wheel. This is when hilarity ensued.

First, she took at least 2-3 minutes to very carefully adjust her seat. And the mirror. And the seat again. Then the side mirror. Then she looked at me expectantly and I said, "Wagons Ho!!" I got the withering teenage look for my trouble and we were off. At 5 miles an hour. On the left hand side of the road. I laughed a little and told her she should probably get back on the right side and she willingly obliged. As we came to the "U" part of our street, we saw one of our neighbors standing in the road talking to another neighbor. As we're creeping around the curve (3 miles an hour for the turn), I plaster my face to the passenger side window, mouth "help me" and start beating my chest. They are laughing so hard that even Kate begins to laugh. We get all the way around to the entrance of our driveway again and I had her stop and told her to turn on her left turn signal. At that point she panics a little and says, "Oh, I don't know how to do that," and I tell her to just push the little stick on the left side of the wheel. So she begins to switch the stick up and down and up and down to make it blink. At that I totally lost it and began to laugh hysterically. I told her that these new-fangled blinkers were automatic and she only had to push it down once for it to blink.

I told her she could go around one more time and so she increased her speed to nearly 10 miles per hour (woo doggies!!) and as we get the curve again, Mr. Neighbors are grinning and ready for us. In unison, they take a HUGE step off the road into the lawn and cover their eyes. It was the funniest thing I have ever seen. We made it safely home where Kate declared that it was fun driving with me, more than she expected.

Totally Tired

I think the allergies combined with the frantic pace of daily life have finally gotten to me. Today I've been tired to the point of exhaustion. All I want to do is lay down and sleep. I knew it was bad when I snapped at Cam for telling me how to do something on the computer. LOL. I live with a techno-nerd who is a computer specialist by trade and for fun and he is always telling me how to do things. So when the 8-year old did, I guess I snapped. To be fair, though, Cam is so very smart that sometimes I forget that she is only 8 and that 8 year old know EVERYTHING!!! Always!!!

I'm hoping that this week is a little better week at work and not so stressed. Kate has training only on Tuesday and Thursday, so there's not going to be a lot of after school running around (I hope!).

I Fought the Good Fight…

…but tonight I had to suck it up and do something that I've been putting off for months. I had to buy some reading glasses. I didn't want to – it's one of those signs of aging that I fought as long as I could. But my arms just aren't long enough anymore. I had my two youngest help me pick out some that they said were cute and not too "middle aged" looking. I don't really hate aging; I hate the SIGNS of aging. The gray hairs, the wrinkles, and now – the reading glasses. I've said for years that aging is unfair between the sexes. As men age they get distinguished. As women age, we get old. The funny thing is is that I don't FEEL older most days. If I had to put a number on how old I feel, it would probably be 25. LOL. If I had to put a number on how old I look, it would be 40. Mentally I stopped aging a long time ago. Physically, I look like a middle-aged woman.

I guess if our society wasn't so obsessed with youth and looking perfect then it wouldn't matter so much. I really struggle with this. I KNOW that I shouldn't judge myself by society's standards, but my subconscious doesn't always agree with that. As a woman, and especially as a former fat woman, I always feel like I just don't quite measure up. I don't know how to counter that sometimes. Any opinions and suggestions are welcome.

Oct. 15, 2007

A couple of days ago I was getting ready for work and putting on my makeup when I hear this little voice from over the banister say, "Mommy, I have to tell you something." So I look up and there was Cam peering down at me. She tells me that she got up really early because she thought we were running late. So she got dressed, came downstairs and ate breakfast and then started watching TV waiting for us to come out of our room. She said when she turned the TV on, she saw that it was midnight, so she went back to bed. And slept in her school uniform since she was already dressed. So her question was could she still wear the uniform since she only slept in it for a few hours.

Kels has been over five months now without a seizure. She still does occasionally get auras, but she says she can tell that they won't go into a seizure. I don't know how she can tell the difference, but I'm glad that she can. The Keppra still gives her the irritated, aggressive nature that just isn't her, but we will address that when we go back to the neurologist in December for her routine follow-up. She goes from being the laid-back and generally easy kid to what we call "Satan's sister" in the blink of an eye. It's hard to deal with sometimes.

We went to Miami two weekends ago for hubby's birthday to meet the rest of his family. His sister found him after over 30 years of no contact and for his birthday, she and her husband paid for the flights for he and I to go and meet an entire village it seemed of relatives – cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. It was almost like watching the prodigal son parable unfold in real life. It was fun, educational, and entertaining. The culture differences didn't seem to matter at all (hubby is ½ Hispanic and ½ Columbian – I am 100% Texas white-girl). I jokingly call my Tex-Mex Spanish "Pig-Spanglish" and I pulled more Spanish out of my memory that I remember learning. LOL. I'll try to post some pictures from the weekend later on.

More Ike Pictures

Our Lassie

Snapped Stop Sign

My new commute

Community Breakfast (no power for 13 days)

I neglected to mention yesterday that the wonderful hubby had to go get a tetanus shot because as we were working in the back yard trying to string up a temporary fence to keep our dog in the yard, he stepped on an extremely rusty nail embedded in a piece of wood. He was okay, but he claims the shot hurts worse (even a day later) than the nail did. While he was at the urgent care waiting an hour for a 15 second shot, I finished piecing together some hogwire across the downed fence to keep the neighbor's Cujo in their yard and our Lassie in ours.

Life after Ike

It's been a long two weeks. Hurricane Ike swept through here two weeks ago and wreaked havoc on our area. We fared alright – we have our electricity back on after 13 days and life is beginning to feel normal once again. Our home came through okay, however, the top 60 feet of a nearly 120 foot oak tree in our back yard took down part of our garage and back yard. Still, we are so very blessed as it is nothing that cannot be fixed and our insurance will cover.

That Friday night we set the girls up in the great room since we are prone to losing trees in serious storms and we didn't want them upstairs just in case. I don't think my wonderful hubby and I slept a wink all night long. The winds and rain began late Friday afternoon and by about midnight, it was getting pretty serious. We kept hearing large branches hit the roof and each and every time we would run upstairs to make sure there were no leaks or damage. At some points we could literally feel the roof lift a little and the pressure inside the house change. At 3:30 we heard an extremely loud "crack", but nothing else. A little before 4:00 am we heard a whistling sound and then the very foundation of our home shook and vibrated. We rushed to take a look out of the back windows, but all we could see was tree. One of our very tall and magnificent oak trees was now our back yard. It had come down on the garage wall and roof and had taken out our back fence.

The funny thing about that is that we had parked our one and only car inside the garage to keep it safe. LOL. We NEVER park in the garage; however, we figured that since we had just the one vehicle, we should move it indoors. God was watching for us, though, because the roof caved in, but didn't come quite close to the roof. We did have one casualty – our big chest freezer that was against that wall.

Even funnier is that the girls – who are normally afraid of regular thunderstorms – slept through the entire hurricane. They never heard any of the limbs hitting the roof an they never felt the tree hit the back yard.

In the light of day, our neighborhood looked like a war zone. Nothing compared to Galveston and other coastal communities, but still – it was pretty desolate. It took 13 days for us to get our electricity back on. During that time we lived outside during the day and ran the generator at night for the fan. Community meals became the norm and the pull of solidarity was strong.

9/1/08

It's been quite a while since I updated last. School has begun (Thank You, God!!) and all the girls have made it through the first week. This next week life gets back into what we hope with be our normal routine again. Since Kelsey's surgeries in May, the wonderful hubby and I have been working flex/remote hours at work so that she is not home alone and let me tell you, that makes for L-O-N-G days.

Kelsey is back in school, as well, and she is glad to be back. We figured out that she's been out of school essentially since January of last year – first due to all her absences and then from being placed on homebound instruction. For a teenage girl – that's a rough time. She is doing wonderfully, though, with no seizures in nearly three months. Right after surgery she began to get severe headaches, but those are resolving as well. At her last neuro check-up, her doc said that she will essentially always have epilepsy since they were unable to remove all the parts that were causing the seizures. The important difference now, however, is that we have control. Control with just ONE medication instead of four. Control with no seizures in-between. Control. What a wonderful word, right? If she maintains control as well as she has been, then her quality of life has improved 1000%.

Kaitlin is an athletic trainer this year and rotates through all the sports, however, it's high-school football time in Texas and that means that her primary sport right now is football. She's enjoying it and has really taken to it. Cam is Cam. <smile>. She's a good kid and too smart for her age. Her private school combines the 4^th and 5^th grades so this year she'll get a little higher scholastic interaction, which is something that she needs in my opinion, to continue to challenge her and force her to grow. She is so very intelligent that she sometimes stagnates on her grade-level work.

Life is good and God is great. I am so glad that we are on an even keel for now.

Drama, Drama, and Hey – Guess What? More Drama!

I guess in a house full of girls I should expect nothing less. #3 is going to church camp on Wednesday and won't be back until Saturday afternoon. She's fine with going, but that piece of drama involves getting my dad to take her up to the church on Wednesday in time for the bus to pick them up. We were raised conservative, old school, Church of Christ and I left the denomination a few years ago – our home church is a Bible-based, non-denom and my dad is one of those that believes you can't be any religion other than CofC and that it's the only church mentioned in the Bible and therefore our church isn't really a church. All well and good except that dad doesn't hold that opinion to himself and mentions that fact to my girls every chance he gets, which makes them uncomfortable and question me in detail each and every time. No one is really worried about Wednesday except for me.

#2 has some drama issues regarding her natural father and their upcoming visitation, which is supposed to begin this Sunday and go on for two weeks. She doesn't like going over there all too often and really only visits out of sense of duty towards #3 (keeping an eye on her, I suppose), but she's old enough to decide for herself whether or not she wants to go. Well, she doesn't want to go and she told him so this evening and he seemed okay with it, but it took days of her worrying over it and asking my hubby and I constantly what to tell him, what words should she say, etc. He has a habit of trying to "guilt" the girls into going when they don't want to, and when that fails, bribing them with stuff to do. The last time he tried that, he told them for two weeks that he had "special tickets" to some event, but would never tell them what – that it was a surprise, so all three went – even #1 – and they did nothing all weekend. He claimed that he ended up not being able to get the tickets to whatever it was. So anyway, needless to say, she was a little anxious about telling him she didn't want to go. And sure enough, he tried to tell her that it was okay except that now he had no one to watch #3 and that he would have to try to switch things around. We kept telling her to be strong when she spoke with him and for once, she was.

#1 – what can I say except that I am sooooo glad not to have to be a 16-year old girl ever again. She came to me a few days ago in tears and told me that she really still liked her old boyfriend and that she wanted to get back together with him when he had asked her a few weeks ago, but she told him no. I asked her if she had felt that way, why did she say no and her response was that she didn't think it was fair to put him through the uncertainty of her surgery and what she might have ended up like. Whew. Heavy stuff, right? So in my mom's wisdom, I told her that it was never too late, that he really liked her and that if she felt that strongly about it then she should tell him. Well, that's when the extra-super drama began because he didn't return her texts, phone calls went to voice mail and there were no return calls for two days. Well, we know this boy and his family fairly well and I just couldn't believe that he would blow her off, so we drove by his house this afternoon after church and she left a note on his door to give her a call. So tonight, his mom texted her back to let her know that his phone was dead and that he was at band camp and wouldn't be home until next Sun. There was such a look of relief on her face when she came downstairs to show me the text that I couldn't help but be relieved for her.

Life is sure fun some days – but never, ever boring.