When mommy takes the day off

Why does she have paint on the bottom of her foot? Where was the paint that she was able to step on it? Where is that paint now?

Cailin did come to me and ask if she could paint her sister's body with poster paint. That is a credit to Cailin not at all a Brownie point for mommy, because obviously, lazily I said "Yes, of course, why not."

You cant see it, but her belly button is painted pink. By the way, she is completely naked. Oh, then they used my nice hand towls to clean it up. Nice!

All by themselves!!!

This is what happens while mommy is holed up in her bedroom watching ridiculous court tv because there isn't anything else on until Dr. Phil and Oprah at 3pm. I just couldn't drag myself out of bed, I just had to find out why this lady stayed with her boyfriend for 11 months who smoke pot three times a day and then after they finally broke up, she loaned him money. I just had this incredible desire to see if he was going to have to pay her back. This is what happens when mommy takes a day off.
This is also exactly what happens when they are left with daddy for an hour. At least this took the whole day (okay...1/2 the day) while I was there.
Happy Friday

bathroom water...ew!

When one of my kids wakes up at night for a drink of water, I blindly search through their play kitchen and find a play cup for them to drink water from? The cup is so small I usually end up having to refill it numerous times from their bathroom sink before they've had their fill. If this is for Cailin she complains the whole time about the grossness of bathroom water and I get completely irritated with her. We argue the entire time about how irrational that is. In the amount of time that whole process takes, I could have walked the 15 feet back into my bedroom and grabbed my own water bottle for them, save the effort of refilling and not have to listen to Cailin bitching. But, how much fun would that be at 3:30 in the morning?

Happy Birthday Mark

EDITED

Two days ago was my brother Mark's birthday. Well, it would have been his birthday...I suppose it still is his birthday. He would have been 38 years old. Wow. It's so strange to think of him as a 38 year old man. Since he died at a mere 25 years old, that's what he always will be in my mind, just 25 years old. April has a great quote in one of her family scrapbooks...

To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. .... We live outside the touch of time. ~Clara Ortega

I love that quote. It's so true.
The reason I'm writing this blog 2 days after Mark's birthday is actually because I forgot his birthday until last night. Isn't that horrible? I should still have it written down, transferred from year to year, from calendar to calendar. But then, why? Isn't the only reason we actually write peoples birthdays down is so that we remember to call them, send them a card, make them a gift, throw them a party? Mark is gone, no more cards, phone calls, dinners, cakes. No more.

Mark was 6 years older than me. We were very close. I participated in all his organizations, hung out with him, we went shopping together. When he was alive I think that he and I were probably closer than any of my other siblings. During the last few months of his life we actually lived together, bought a house together so he could be near my parents. I helped bathe him, gave him his breathing treatments. Rubbed ointment on his sores. Helped him get dressed. Drove him to his numerous doctors appointments...everything. Those last 3 weeks, living in that house with him away in the hospital were horrible.
Then to receive that dreaded phone call from my mom, get to the hospital...you need to say goodbye. It was a Sunday, September 17, 1995 (not 2005). He struggled to breathe, everyone was racing from all parts of the country to get there. He stopped breathing at 3:15pm, after a morpine induced coma, his room was packed with family. I remember as he was taking his final breaths, silently begging for each next breath as my aunt wispered behind me, "Just go Mark, its all right, you can go, take your last breath and go, go home." That was the hardest thing I have ever been through in my entire life. Siblings are all suppose to grow old together. We are not suppose to die that young. For those first few years after he died even though it was only 1 person gone, it seemed like half the family was missing. From 6 siblings to 5, it felt so drastic.
The funeral was in the chapel. The time before that Mark was in a chapel was for...hmmmm I cant remember. It was for something important I know. But I do remember that he and his boyfriend came together and they were wearing coordinating suits...how cute. People refused to shake his hand, some pretended not to see him. That broke my heart. That's a main reason why I left the church for so long. They always say (like in that korny "Charly" book I just read), The gospel is perfect, the people are not. Hmmmm, I always have a hard time with that saying. There were those wonderful few who genuinely loved seeing him at church. Brother Addison and Brother Welker especially. They ended up speaking at his funeral. Mark would have loved that, he loved them and their examples.
I always wonder what kind of Uncle he would have been? Would he sit back and observe, would he get down on the floor and play with them, would he be the uncle that picks them up on a Saturday afternoon to take them to a movie and spoil them with anything and everything?
Would he have adopted kids of his own? Would he have eventually found a partner that truly loved him and he was head over heels for? Would he still be a huge AIDS activist? I like to think he would have been and done all of that.
Sometimes it saddens me that none of the grand kids were ever able to meet him, but at the same time I realize they met him, they met him before I met them. They knew the Mark with no lesions, with hair, no scars, no pain. They knew the Mark I always saw when I looked at him. How lucky for them, how sad they cant remember, but how lucky nonetheless.
I miss him, I miss him so horribly much I get intense sharp pains in my chest and so sick to my stomach I have to curl up in a ball. Sometimes my eyes are so swollen from crying it takes hours to recover. I wish he was here with us still. I wish I could call him on the phone and tell him about my day and my family. I wish I could confide in him. But its for reasons like this I am so glad I'm a religious person. How much more horrible it would be if I thought I would never see him again, talk to him again, touch him again. If I thought there were no such things as souls or spirits and all that remains is what's buried under the ground and will one day be no more. What a depressing thought. I know Ill see him again, I know he is able to make new and better choices where he is now. I know he knows we love him and think about him. Even if I cant talk to him I know he knows about my day, my family and my problems.
So, Happy Birthday Mark...I love you!

Does this make my mother slightly more hip than I?

I had to use the manual to operate my mother's washing machine tonight. It took me 5 minutes to just figure out where to put the detergent. Then another 5 to 10 minutes figuring out where to turn it on (which actually means, how do I get all the digital readings to glow?), then another 10 minutes figuring out cycles and rinses and everything else. But then when I finally went to actually begin the cycle. It wouldn't work. So, I refer to my 4 inch thick manual. 10 more minutes of reading and I figure out it's because I didnt press the second start button soon enough after making all of my various selections, so I had to start all over again. All this just so I can have a clean pair of jeans to wear to a stupid high school band reunion that I desperately do not want to attend but am being dragged to kicking and screaming by my lovely (and slightly nerdy) sister in law whom I love dearly. Ugh and @#!*

I dont even notice it anymore

Rain rain go away
Come again another day

Self Service

Self Service sucks!
Too many places are going self service, they must think this is a luxury to people. Maybe to some people it is, for whatever reason. Maybe they don't like having to talk to another human being. Maybe they have control issues. Maybe they like the shorter lines in the self serve aisles. Maybe they like the challenge of keeping 2 kids out of the paths of oncoming carts while trying to balance all of your already scanned items on the tiny little platform they provide while scanning and rescanning fast enough so the machine doesn't keep beeping at you while rummaging through the already scanned items to try to figure out what your 2 year old just threw in there and not being able to find it hoping that the alarms don't go off and that God or the local police wont hold you accountable for clepting that mysterious item then loading all of the bags into the shopping cart then suddenly realizing neither of the 2 children which were previously in tow are no longer within sight because Ive been so preoccupied with checking myself out that I have now completely lost them. Maybe some people like this.
My fatherinlaw also hates self service. He is almost 80 years old and ever time he goes to Home Depot an employee there reminds him of the self service checkout. One time the line was so long, they asked him to go to the self service checkout, he told them no thank you as politely as an 80 year grumpy Spaniard can. They then practically insisted he go there, they would show him how to use it. I'm not sure exactly what conversation transpired that day, I'm sure it involved some bulging neck veins, maybe some 4 letter words (English or Spanish) and that young man may or may not still have his job (or life).
I cant stand that I have to pump my own gas. I cant tell you the last time I filled up my car completely with gas. Usually I get about 3/4 of the way there and get bored, cold or irritated by how slow its filling and abort the whole process.
Today I stopped by Lakeshore Learning. I heard their laminating runs $0.29 a foot, great price right? I stop by there quickly with the intention of dropping it off. No can do!!! They offer self laminating. I turn right around and get back in my car. I will tomorrow go to Office Max and pay 5 times that amount and I don't have to do anything myself. For me personally my time is way more valuable than that.
I don't want to print my own pictures at Walgreens, I don't want to check myself out at the grocery store or Walmart or Costco or Home Depot, I don't want to wash my own car, I don't want to Laminate things myself, I don't want to pump my own gas, I don't want to check out my own library books (I do this because Cailin loves to do it, but I don't like it), I don't want to print my own postage for my packages or measure my packages or figure out if the label will fit, I don't want to print out my own boarding passes at the airport and I absolutely loathe buffets.
Am I the only out there that is fine paying higher prices for service, that loves just standing there doing nothing while an employee does their job and checks me out, that loves a waiter to bring my food to me instead of wandering around like an idiot while my kids say no to all the waxy looking bacteria ridden community shared vats of slightly consumable items?
I don't know, call me lazy, called me old fashioned, call me a completely reasonable consumer. But whatever I am, fed up with all this bull!*#@ is definitely what I am!!!!!! and AMEN

Wendys late night

I was sitting in the Wendys parking lot this evening...okay it was probably actually considered night...7:30pm. I was getting ready to go inside and get some last minute dinner for my family, but I had to make a quick phone call to my sister to tell her a story, and then my husband called. But during those phone conversations, probably a total of 10 minutes, I had 3 separate Wendys employees come up to my car window and try to give me a bag of food. What was going on in there? Strangeness!!!