Day 1 of 365

I sort of fizzled on the NaNoWriMo challenge. I now have made it my challenge (NOT resolution. Resolutions are destined to fail) to write a page a day. Initially, it was going to be a book but nah, I will just blog myself to death. I rather enjoy it and who knows, maybe I will amass followers who actually read this stuff.

I have no silliness or awkward view on things this morning so I will just let the thoughts flow through my fingers until I think I have written enough. I am going to start with asking your opinion. What do you think if I were to take some of my favorite posts and make them into a book? It is mainly for people like my mother who never access the internet. Heck, she does good operating the VCR and call waiting. I think that is about as far as she WANTS to go. She has had the interwebs in the past and has even had a cell phone or two but they are just not her thing, I guess. I know maybe she will laugh at some of my insights and roll her eyes at the others. I am positive there are even some she will just scratch her head and go "WHA???"  That is the point. If I can elicit that type of response out of some of my readers, then I have succeeded.

I have discovered that its not about numbers when you blog. Its about putting your writing out there and keep putting it out there. Who cares if you have 50 or a million followers. (Well yea, a million followers would be great but you have to EARN that.) I have learned to accept that my time will come. Some people do not get their yearned for recognition until they are worm chow. If my stuff gets out there now or when my grand children are grown, as long as it has made it to someone to read and enjoy, that is the point. So yea, maybe one day I will have enough to collate my posts into a book and send it to my mother as a gift. Yes, I will put it out there for sale because anyone could use a buck or two but it will be just for her. I am sure she will appreciate that. (Of course any mother would appreciate something hand made by her kid. Yes, it is hand made because I wrote the ENTIRE thing.) Maybe I will put a picture of her in it and write a snippet or two about her as well. Who knows. I just know it is something I have been seriously considering over the past few days and I know that she will at least read it. She IS a reader, after all.

Ok, I think I am out of this topic. Pen down, turn your booklets in folks.

What do YOU think?

Never stop smooching your children's faces.

Small children love to give their parents kisses and hugs.  As they get older, that enthusiasm tends to wane and, for parents like me, makes us sad.  Therefore, I still like to catch them when they first open their eyes.  They are still full of love for mommy or daddy and that first morning hug makes anyones' day.  I still even sneak into the teenagers room and kiss her forehead whilst she is sleeping.

I never miss an opportunity to tell them that I love them. Just one more time. There will come a day when you will not be able to as they will have their own lives and will not remember the joy of a hug from mommy or know the thrill mommy gets from that unconditional love of her child. 


Some children are great and that love for their parents never falters. Those are the rare diamond in the rough. However, know that each child loves their parents in their own way. Maybe just not like the parent wants them to.


Children, remember that your parents are your biggest fan and when it comes to you being successful, they will move mountains for you to get that one opportunity of a lifetime.  I think this is where the disconnect comes with teenagers.   Teens want so much to do their own thing but still need guidance of their doting parent. They just don't know that yet.


This one is short and sweet.  What do YOU think?

Proud moments as a mother.

Not long after we moved to the beach, I had set a cheese board to smoulder on the stove.  Calvin was at work and I was sitting with the oldest son and youngest daughter assisting them with their homework at the dining room table.  It was dinner time. You know mw, Ms. Multi tasker (even at seven months preggo, I was pretty good at it.)  Well, the dining room table was off from the kitchen, sort of in the living room.  It also happened to be about five feet from the back door.
While cooking, I happened to turn the wrong burner on to boil a some water.  Ikept a small, wooden, cheeseboard on the back burner and THAT was the burner I turned on instead.  While we were not in the kitchen, it had a chance to fill our small kitchen up with a great deal of smoke. Then the AC kicked in and smoke just ROLLED out of the kitchen.  Everything else seemed to happen at the same time.  At the instant we noticed the smoke, the smoke detectors went off.  I immediately knew what I had done as I do that chit all the time. So I got up an took two steps toward the kitchen.  My mind was racing and focused on getting that cheeseboard off there and into the sink before it burst into flames. At the same time, I also thought of the kids. I turned around, and CJ was still sitting at the table...totally not knowing what was going on. I am certain he knew exactly what I did.  There was not a fire....YET.  I turn to look for Alyssa and all I see is the back door swinging.
I lean just a little bit to my left and see a tiny face of a five year old, about twenty feet outside the back door trying to get a glimpse of what was going to happen next.  I will take the time to tell you I could not have been more proud of our baby girl in that moment. I immediately took care of the cheeseboard, no fire, just a lot of smoke. Whew!  Then retrieved our daughter and covered her face in smooches and filled her ears with praise.
She had done the right thing.  In hindsight, it was cute and funny because she got the Hell out of Dodge Jack!

Now, lets move forward ten years:

My dear readers know that I am a WAH professional and I work from home.  The other night, I was working and a thunderstorm came through.  Just after I shut down my computer and systems, there was a terribly bright lightening strike as well as horrible thunder.  I heard my kids in the next room scrounging around.

When I finally got everything settled, I walk into the hallway to a pitch black house. What happened next would have been a good scream scene for a horror movie (provided that I screamed, of course.)
The darkness began to speak to me in children's voices. O.o....I held up my phone as I was not near a light switch and seen that my children were all sitting on the couch, in the living room, in the dark.  Well, well, well.  I found out later that Alyssa corralled the children to the couch and turned all the lights off to be safe during the storm.  Another proud moment, I must say.  However, when the ten year old got up to use the bathroom, (I had joined them in the darkness, of course, it was quiet and I was NOT going to pass that up) he turned the light on so he could see.  Here comes Alyssa "All that electricity!!!!"  Hahaha.  Yes, she was being overly cautious, but she was being safe all in the same breath.  Yes, Momma is proud!  Daddy taught her that and she absorbed the safety knowledge well.

I am confident, as a parent that she will be safe and have an emergency plan when it comes to nature bringing forth her rage.  I can only hope that it will spill over into her interactions with people when she goes off to college or begins to have a more colorful, (yikes, and even less structured) social life and as an adult.  We parents spend our entire lives teaching our children to be safe and to be their own person and can only hope that the values we establish for them to mirror are the good ones and that they apply them to their own lives and go on to be productive adults who get to live long, healthy, and happy lives.

This is the direction I believe our daughter is heading in and I could not be more proud.  What proud moments have you had (like these) with your children?

Have you ever had a moment that was potentially catastrophic and hilarious all in the same moment?

The Future of Tech Support

Many of you already know that I am a technical support representative by trade.  Good times.  Goooooood times! (Cosmoism) It never occurred to me that the children pay attention to what I do when I am at work. Yes, I work from home doing this stuff.  In every technical support situation or any electrical "fix it" situation, you begin with checking that it is plugged in properly and unplug everything and then plug it back in one piece of the equation at a time.  Simple stuff.  That will fix about seventy five percent of your issues then it goes into the more complicated stuff.

Before I began to do this, the way to fix things was to beat the holy crap out of the thing or kick it and pray that it continues to work for at least the next three months or so as you begin to save funds to replace the thing being stupid in the first place.  What did your television ever do to you?

With all that background, let me get to what I am ranting about.  I often worry about what our number nine is going to do when he becomes a functioning member of society.  I would hate to think that he is going to work at a fast food restaurant for the rest of his life as a burger flipper.  I know he loves his video games and taking things apart and he can pick apart a game to the very stitch.  That is something.  There are actually jobs out there developing video games and what not.  His math skills are excellent and he loves math period!  If reading were to be as fun for him as math, he would be dangerous! (The next Dr. Sheldon Cooper???) So we talk about that a lot and he loves electronics.  Great!  There is a future there at the moment.

I was sitting in here on FaceBook (what else do I do with my free time?) and there must have been some issue with the living room tv as I heard the following conversation:

Nine: Joshua! Don't hit it! That won't make it stop!
Six:  But that fixes the other TV!
Nine: I know but we are going to try something else.
Six: OK.
Nine: Turn the TV off first, then the cable box and let me check something.
Six: ***turns off the TV then the cable box***
Nine: I have to check and make sure it is plugged in to the wall. We may have knocked it loose playing Xbox yesterday. ***Grunts and mumbles as he crawls behind the TV stand to check the plug***
Six: Can I turn it on yet? I wanna watch Robot and Monster!
Nine: NO! Let me get out of here first. We are going to turn things on one at a time!
Six: ***pouts*** Ok.
Nine:  Ok, now, Turn the cable box on first
Six: ***pushes button***
Nine: Now turn the TV on.
Six:  Yay!!!!! We did it!  It works!
Nine: Told ya to listen to me, we have to do it one at a time or it wont work. You don't have to hit it.

For my fellow WAH peeps that have worked in Tech Support. You can imagine how proud I was sitting here listening to that interaction!  I was beaming so loud you would have thought the Sun came to visit my office.

Anyone else have a WAH story to share?

What is with the whole girly thing?

I remember when I was pregnant with our first child together. We found out we were having a girl and I had so many fears! Not the normal fears of a healthy child with all digits, no. Fears like, how am I supposed to play Barbie and nails and hair. Uck!  When I was a child, I was nothing like that. I hated to wear dresses and loved to collect slugs in a coffee can. Yes, Tomboy all the way.

Now I was faced with a creature that had the potential to be something that I wholly was not.

To my suprise, while she was a dainty little six pounds, she was perfect in every way!  I often tell people she was born with a football in one hand and a pair of sneakers in the other because she was my little tomboy!  She loved to dig in the dirt, play ball, and hang out with dad while he was fixing the cars. Every thing that I did as a little girl.  Certainly the twinkle in my eye and the diamond in the rough! I still had my fears. Make up, boys, etc.  However, as history proves, she is still such a gem!  She loves to do her own thing. Hates dresses, loves to throw the ball and uses very little makeup if any.

I could not be more proud.  For those of you who are new moms, fear not. Your child will be perfect in your heart no matter what they do and it is even more fun when their interests are right up your alley!  All of our children are wholly different from the next and that makes each of them perfect!  We have the shoe lover, the ladies man, the football player (our girl!), the soldier and the peace loving hippie. Each very special and very perfect in their own way.

I just had to write about that this morning. You know this is not my normal Rant but, sometimes, you are just so overfilled with love or emotion about something, you simply have to put it in words. Isn't that what blogging is all about? I think so!

Shh! Your Children are Trying to Tell You Something!

NOTE: This was posted across my other social networks under different titles. Here, this title is fitting.

With this technology saturated world, it is quite easy to stop and admire the beauty we have around us every day.  Each time we have to go somewhere as a family, the children do not understand my reasoning for making them leave all their "devices" at the house.  I feel like a drill sergeant or a prison guard checking pockets for stuff as they go out the door. I want them to have to look up and see what is going on outside the car window.  Apparently it is too much to ask that they leave the phones, ipods, and gaming devices at the house for the ten minute ride to the store because the clouds in the sky or the tractor riding down the street is not that exciting. Or is it?

When they do see that cool car that has the Froot Loops logo on it they are all "oohhh  aaaahhh, woooowww."  That is what I want them to see. Preferably, I want them to see that clouds can make shapes and how the leaves turn toward the sky when it is about to rain (that was something I didn't notice until my late twenties.) Or to even notice the homeless man pushing his cart down the street so we can have a conversation about that. You know, stay in school, don't give up, or some other character builder like that. What about seeing the lady in the motorized wheelchair. We can talk about understanding that each of us is different and that does not mean it is a bad thing.  I love those moments. They make us communicate face to face and that is something that is lost in the modern world today.

I know what you are thinking. 'What in the world has gotten into this lady! She is normally so on it, so silly. What happened?'  A mothers love for her children and a wife's love for her spouse get in the way of the skewed version of my life sometimes and I have to remind myself that I am human and this is a living planet.  This planet is beautiful. I see so many times how parents refuse to let their kids get dirty. I mean from REAL dirt. You know, go dig a hole or make mud pies or find a worm and pick it up.  It is not going to kill you! The great benefit there is that they learn real life lessons, they have fun, and they build up immunities and NOT develop things like allergies and other illnesses that everyone seems to have now a days.

Further, active children that play outside and use their imaginations are quite fun to watch. You can see them observe the world around them and have their own inner teachable moments. It is a beautiful thing.  You are not going to catch some disease by rolling around in the grass chasing a ball. It is not the end all if they get a little bit of dirt on their clothes. Whatever happened to changing into your 'play clothes' and going outside!  It is beautiful out there! Trees, grass, dirt, fresh air, and fun. Oh yea, and flowers.  So what if it is a dandelion. Show them how it turns your chin yellow when you rub it there. Our boys bring me flowers for my desk every single day. Dandelions, and other such weed flowers are fine. They think they are pretty and are sweet enough to pick them for me then I am going to let them. Even the dandelions thay blow away when you pick them up, you know, the little snowball things. We blow them. Yes sir.  Look at your child's face as they marvel in the fact that the wind carries the seeds away.  It is beautiful.

I must admit I am guilty of the electronic addiction. We all are. Just remind yourself to step back sometimes. Your children are trying to teach you something that you have forgotten. They are trying to teach you that the world is a marvel and we need to be in awe of it. They are trying to teach you that it is a beautiful place and to enjoy it because life is simply too short. As my husband says, that phone will be there when you get done, those messages will not disappear simply because you are not tending to them.  That electronic gadget will operate the same when you get back and it will not get lonely.

Put it down, smell the roses for childs' sake!