At last they are tamed

Steve left this morning to get his hair cut. In the past he has always bravely (as I say) sauntered into a 'Great Clips' or 'Cost Cutters' or some other place that minimally requires a 4 hour video course certification and your word that you haven't killed anyone in the past 6 months, most specifically with scissors. He usually goes on a Saturday morning, right when they open. He walks in, puts in his name, asks the wait, and if it's longer than 20 minutes...he bolts. Too much precious time waiting reading hair magazines and staring at all the other waiting men's shoes. Maybe if the odds of him getting the cute girl he might up the allowed time to 25 minutes, but that's pushing it. He has to weigh the perks (no pun intended), is it worth the extra wait to be able to legally stare at voluptuousness as she cuts the front of his hair. And what if he gets sweaty, stinky hair grease dude instead. Hmmmmm, what a decision. Should he take the chance?
His pre hair cutting ritual- he has to take a shower before going, let the earth spin off its axis if he actually has to pay extra for them to wash his hair. And, he has informed me that no man, no respectable man, would ask to have his hair washed before cutting. Apparently that is absolutely ridiculous.
Well, since moving to the greater Northwest, our lives have changed in many ways.
-I've been sick for almost the entire 4 months.
-Cailin has found a friend next store that likes to yell "F!!! off" towards her through our sliding glass door when he doesn't get his way.
-Our kids wont go to bed until 10pm because the sun is as bright as it is at noon.
-And the jumbles in the newspaper are amazing.
But, the biggest change...okay not the biggest but a pretty good perk. Steve has actually started going to an actual hairdresser. Yes, you read correctly, not a person wielding scissors who can somewhat cut a straight line. An actual person who went to school, knows about thinning hair, razor cutting and washes and massages, no extra charge.
But today, he came home, and guess what she had done? She trimmed, she tamed the webs of wiry hair that pertruded off of his brow, right above his eyes. Some people call them eyebrows. Steve's had gone beyond that description. They, at any moment could have reached out and attacked. "They"? Well, actually "It" because it was slightly connected in the middle (I won't use the dreaded word) but I would find myself gently pulling one or two small hairs from the middle as he was in his deepest sleep. (He has no idea, shhhhh). I am so excited!!! His crazy, dark, bushy, loooong, untamed brows, have been tamed. So handsome!!! Now if we could only get him to a cosmetic podiatrist. (Is there such a thing?)

PS POST
Things you thought you would never have to say to or about your children...
"Avrie, dont kick the squirrel, it could bite you"
"I think Avrie just fell off the dining room table...again"
"Stop playing with the electrical outlets"
"You have to take off your clothes before taking a shower"
"Please stop playing with my moles!!!"

Pneumonia

Just a brief update. It's 12:30 in the afternoon and I haven't even fed my kids breakfast or lunch yet. Great parenting! Hey, they aren't complaining.
So, I went and got a chest x-ray yesterday. They made me wear a strange belt. Anyways, it turns out I have pneumonia! Oh joy! So, I am taking my first antibiotic in I cant even tell you how long. And, hopefully I will cease from coughing, gagging, vomiting, and crying. Because frankly, I just cant take it any longer.
Avrie is attempting to scale me so Ive gotta go, the peasants are beginning to complain.

What I love about my hubby

Two for Togetherness
Two things you compliment your husband on while in his presence:
1. His extreme patience and laid back personality
2. His thoughtfulness and attentiveness to me
Two compliments you make about your spouse to your friends: (same as above)
1. His sense of humor is hilarious
2. He is an AMAZING husband and father
Two traits you married him/her for:
1. Calm demeanor
2. We mesh so incredibly well, he is absolutely my best friend.
Two days you cherished the most with your husband being together:
1. Our wedding day
2. The births of both of our daughters, after everyone had gone home and we just laid and stared at these amazing beings we created together
Two material things you could give your husband if you just inherited a fortune:
1. Toyota Tacoma, newest model, biggest, every extra feature you could dream of.
2. Permission to quit his job and start his own company
Two things you would miss the most if he left for two weeks:
1. Talking to him about anything and everything when he gets home in the evenings
2. Our relaxing weekends together
Two thoughts that crossed your mind when you first met/saw your spouse: (this is a hard one)
1. I've got to get him to go to a dance with me, I chased him until he said yes, after several nos! (he didn't really like dances)
2. Pretty cute, but the oversized glasses gotta go.
Two favorite dates:
1. Anytime we go to dinner at a really nice restaurant
2. We use to take walks all of the time before we had kids, I loved that!
Two funny odd things you love:-
1. When Im talking to him and I know he's not listening, he always gives me answers that don't match my questions.
2. I call him the armless looker, he looks without his hands and can never find anything.
Two places you have lived with your spouse:
1. Arizona
2. Puget Sound, WA
Two favorite vacations:
1. San Francisco - we didn't take a honeymoon so we took a 1 year anniversary trip instead.
2. France - 2002, we took a 1 day trip to Paris that was fun and relaxing

My declining health

My wonderful husband has courageously taken both Avrie and Cailin to run errands. First he has to go to Target to return the second fan we have purchased, put together and doesn't even turn on. It's a Honeywell product, which I think would be pretty reliable, but that is not the case. Let's see if Steve comes home with our third dead fan. His next adventure will take him across the street from Target to Home Depot. He is going to buy some potting soil so we can transfer Cailin's plants that Vicky planted with her into bigger pots. Plus he is buying more stain to finish our bedroom furniture. He has successfully stained both nightstands and now only has the dresser to stain and some shelves which we haven't even purchased yet. So, my whole point to this paragraph...I have time to give an update of my life.
How is my life lately? Sick, sick, sick!!! I have completely down and out sick for 4 weeks. Is that insane? I am never sick this long. I have a nasty congestive cough, stuffy nose, fatigue, I cant breathe and to top it all off, I seriously pulled some major muscles in my chest from coughing so vigorously. Oh, every time I cough for more than a minute straight my body starts to hurl and I vomit up anything I have eaten in the past few hours. I've decided to give up on eating. After 3 weeks of this insanity I finally took myself to the naturopath. Diagnosis: Upper respiratory Infection. Hundreds of dollars later, my immune system might be better but my illness, still here. So, after some research, Steve and I are going to urge my naturopath into testing for Valley Fever. The incubation period is exact for when I was in AZ last and the symptoms match precisely. I don't know, we'll see.
Oh, I almost forgot about my massage from Hell!! I went in to get a deep tissue massage. It doesn't even sound like it would feel good. Trust me, it doesn't. Basically, since I have been coughing for so long and hunching over when I cough and pulling in all my muscles. My muscles have conveniently attached to my tissue which my therapist had to go in and rip apart. I could actually feel them being torn apart. Nice! She stretched my muscles and gave me a extremely deep deep massage...Ouch!! But it helped, Im actually going back for a second helping this week. So, we emailed the naturopath about the Valley Fever, hopefully he will get back to me tomorrow. I just want to know why this is not going away!!!!!
Im going to put away, or attempt to put away some laundry now.
Sorry for the whining blog, but that's all can offer right now.

Does anyone notice anymore?

Have we become completely sensitized to the carnage that is still occurring over in Iraq? I think so. I myself am guilty of flipping the news station over to another one when they begin reporting of yet another car bombing or insurgent raid in Baghdad. But we have to stop drifting off, we have to continue to be aware. We need to keep talking about it, reading about it. We cant let the people over there become yet another Rwanda, where we turn our heads. You think Im talking about the US soldiers over there? Maybe a little bit, but no, not really. They signed up for this service. They knew when they raised their hand in the air to take whatever vow they take, that the reality of going somewhere dangerous was possibly in their future. That was a choice. Im not saying the reasons for them actually being over there is valid, not even minutely valid. But again, it was a choice to sign up for a military in which they served a government that always has ulterior motives, is never 100% honest, and no matter how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise, is and will always be a smidgen corrupt. If they didn't realize these truths before signing away their lives into the service of the military then they should have probably done a little more research. I am grateful for them being there to protect my freedom when it actually needs protecting, for being there when they serve our country in a honest, proud and moral manner.
But back to the people we should still remember. The citizens, the children, the women, the men who just want to live, to work, and to be husbands and fathers. These people might have been oppressed before we invaded their country, but to be honest, we haven't made it much better for them. So, I hope and pray that the US can get their asses out of there without completely destroying our reputation as Americans and the peoples lives right along with it. You don't have to be pro or anti Bush to understand what Im saying. Why do we always have to choose sides? This is just my opinion. Love it or leave it. Read the link I attached, you cant hide your eyes from what's happening in the world, you cant refuse to feel to care or to understand. To be human, to accept that privilege, you have to care, you have to read, you have to acknowledge the realities of the world you live in.
PS. To look at the link I've attached, click on the title "Does anyone notice anymore?"

Twilight Zone

I think I am going to go completely crazy. Here is why.
All day long, I am constantly throwing toys from my kitchen and dining room into the living room. They are then eventually piled up at the bottom of my stairs in an unattractive lump and the house rule is, you are not allowed to climb those stairs empty handed. I don't care what you take up, I don't care where you put it once you get up there. Sometimes its dirty clothes, sometimes toys, often handfuls of shoes, at night it's usually a sleeping child. But you have to take something.
Anyways, last night as I was cleaning up after dinner and like always, throwing toys into our living room. I lobbed a small toy makeup brush of Cailins into the living room, aimed at the bottom of the stairs which happens to be near the fireplace (which by the way, has a sliding chain curtain hanging across it, closing it off, very important info). The small pink and black makeup brush, at very high speed, hit right below the fireplace and then....COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED!!!
I swear on my own life that magic or witchcraft or some type of time continuum occurred in my house last night because that makeup brush is nowhere to be found.
I cleaned my living room, spotless, from top to bottom...nothing.
Looked inside the heater, on the other side of the room...nothing.
Took a fork and sifted through the minimal soot still in our fireplace from winter...nothing.
Took a flashlight, looked up inside the fireplace...nothing. (that would have been one talented makeup brush...or thrower)
Rolled up the rug, maybe it magically crawled under the heavy rug after ricocheting off the wall...nothing.
Looked on the mantel...nothing.
IT IS GONE. I swear it is no where to be found. I think Im going crazy. Steve said it came flying across the room at an extraordinary speed, but that wouldn't make it vanish?! Would it?? Did magic happen, did I break some sort of time warp? Will I find it 2 years from now randomly in the middle of the living room.
I cant talk about this any longer. I am seriously going a little batty from this whole experience. Doo-doo-doo-doo--Doo-doo-doo-doo (you have to hum the music from the Twilight Zone to get the full effect)

Freedom!! (almost)

I lost my cat. My 15 year old, blind, hyperthyroid, high blood pressure, heart murmured, urinating cat. It has a happy ending, or not so happy, depending on who's side you are on, mine or the cat's.
Skeeter (the cat), had once again, pissed on my rug. In the same exact spot she has been pissing for the last month. Does she think it's her litter box? She is blind, but I don't buy that excuse for a second. She vindictively does this. I know she does. It's her way of getting back at the humans, showing them, us, even though we think we are in charge, she can still screw up my whole day and throw me completely off by just taking a little squat. I know its malicious, she has always been a non-litter box user.
It first began with her peeing on random articles of clothing that were laying on the floor, just her suttle way of telling us what slobs we were. Steve actually went to work in jeans that had been peed on the night before. He didn't notice until he got to work and this odd smell continued to follow him around. Most people would have gone home to change, bought new pants during lunch, no, not Steve, he plugged his nose and endured, like a man...a gross man. Once, the first night my good friend Tia and I moved in together, we were sitting watching a movie when Skeeter crawled up onto Tia's lap to cuddle, so we thought, but instead actually squatted on her lap and peed. Yes, she peed directly on top of her. She has peed on my leg while sleeping, on Steve's butt in the middle of the night. But, mostly she has it in for our 4 year old Cailin. When Cailin was first born, Skeeter tolerated her, but for some reason, when she got her own big girl bed, that was as much favoritism as this cat could handle. This cat peed on Cailin's bed almost every single day! I have never washed so much bedding in my life. Our laundry detergent bill was outrageous. Why did we keep her? She was my brother Mark's cat, and since he has since passed away, I definitely feel obligated to keep her around. Plus, she is 15 years old, and I think on her way out.
So, on Thursday, the day we were to get our carpets shampooed, Skeeter squatted right in front of me in her make shift, carpet litter box in my living room and peed right in front of me. Bitch!
I immediately threw her outside while I furiously scrubbed the spot. I continued to check on her every 30 minutes or so. Since we have an open back porch, I didn't want her wandering off (or did I?). I had some friends coming over to visit, so while I chatted with them for 1-1.5 hours, Skeeter was left to wander around blind as a bat. After they left, she was gone. Completely gone. I searched everywhere, but right before I was about to give up. I trotted up a steep embankment of a woodsy area, and there she was curled up in a ball laying in some pine needles. I thought that maybe a hawk had carried her off or something, she only weighs 4 lbs. But no, she just got lost. Actually crossed a parking lot magically without being hit by a car, avoided attack black birds that squawk and swoop down onto her and didn't get roughed up by any bully squirrels. I was slightly impressed. But now she is a kitchen, back porch only cat.
Our carpets are nice, shampooed and clean and no cat is allowed on them.
Would I be held accountable for my actions if I just stopped giving her her high blood pressure medication? When I stand and receive my judgment, will He consider that negligence, malicious, or even a little mini-murder? Would He look down on me for my actions? Could I explain I just couldn't endure any longer. This was something greater than I could handle. Im tired of vet visits, medications, cleaning up urine and cat poop, stinky cat food, cat hair, vacuuming litter residue. 15, that's old. Maybe Ill just hold out. I don't know, we'll see.