Summer came in like a freaking Lion

Summer has come to Indiana unexpectedly.  Two weeks ago, we were fretting over frost advisories and today it's supposed to be in the upper 80's.  Sadly, this is common for Spring.  In April and May we have an equal chance of building a snowman or going swimming.  But eventually we will settle into the super-hot temps of summer and I'll complain that I wish it was cooler. 

On Mother's Day, we went out to my mom's house to go shooting with the rifle and had to wear warm clothes.  We went back this past weekend and we were sweating like crazy.  Shooting is fun, though my shoulder hurts for a day or two afterwords.  On Sunday night, I was sitting in my chair and I stretched and I heard a maswsive crack as the bones in my shoulder rearranged themselves.  I could actually feel the shift.  It was rather disconcerting. 

The arrival of summer also means that it's time to spend more time with Little Guy outside.  At some point today we are going to go outside and play in the sprinkler.  He loves the sprinkler and I love watching him play.  Right now, he's becoming such a little boy.  The baby aspects are disappearing and he's developing a little boy body and little boy legs.  I find myself looking at him and wondering where the baby went. 

Though watching him play as a little boy provides hours of amusement too.  Yesterday, Big Guy took him to the park while I was working.  Little Guy decided he had to pee and went to a corner of the playground, dropped trou, and peed.  Big Guy said the first clue he had that Little Guy was doing something he oughten't was a fellow park parent shouting: "He's peeing!  He's peeing!"  So.... We can never show our faces there again.  Of course, while we were regaling Whiteybare and his girlfriend with this story outside lst night, Little Guy went over to the lot next to us and started peeing again.  

 

"What are you doing?!" I shouted. 

"I'm peeing all over the place!" Little Guy shouted back with a grin.

I think he's definitely his father's child. 

Easter Celebration, EC droppers, and the end of Spring Break

I hope everyone had an amazing and peaceful holiday! We handled it pretty well. We woke up, woke little guy up, and enjoyed the fun seeing what the Easter Bunny brought him. We also discovered the bunny had hidden candy-filled eggs around our yard. Little Guy thought this was awesome. We went over to my in-laws house for a brief visit before we went over to my mom's house and discovered the Easter Bunny had indeed been busy. Little Guy got another basket and another chocolate bunny!

When we went to my mom's house, Little Guy wanted to go out right away and feed the chickens, ducks and the goat. He chased after Mocha the goat with a handful of hay, desperate to get close enough to touch her. However, unbeknownst to the rest of us, there was an attack rooster on the prowl. While he was chasing after Mocha the goat, Little Guy tripped and fell. The "Bad Rooster" was on him in a flash, pecking and scratching at him. We rescued the screaming boy and carried him up to the house. On the way there, I decided it would be a good plan to get him to feed and interact with Good Chicken so that Little Guy didn't develop an irrational fear of them. We got him a cup of food and while he fed the chickens on the deck, Big Guy, my mom, and I used sticks and a bat to keep the bad rooster at bay. It worked too. By the end of the visit, not only was Little Guy not afraid of the chickens, he was also chasing the bad rooster with a stick telling me he had to "whack dat bad rooster". That's my boy. Once the fear is over, it's time for vengeance and retribution.

Tonight begins my class schedule again. I feel like I'm almost totally unprepared, but that's nothing new. The beginning of the month always makes me feel that way. I'm teaching a Comp II class this month which means a great deal of paper writing and grading involvement. However there are other events which shall prove, at the very least, interesting. It's enough to be a blog entry in and of itself.


In the meantime, Top 5 EntreCard Droppers for March are:

Dave Lucas
The Third Uncle
Orient Lodge
Sparkle
Computer Aid

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

As I sit here with coffee that contains a shot of Irish Creme in my cup, I would like to wish everyone a Happy Saint Patrick's Day.  Big Guy is still sick with his cold, so he won't be celebrating to hardily.  I, however, embrace my Irish heritage on this day.  The irony does not escape me that today, we celebrate the triumph of Irish Catholicism over Paganism.  I can only give a wry smile over it. 

Admittedly, Saint Patrick's day is not really an Irish holiday, but more of a "diaspora" holiday.  We've turned it into a holiday for everyone to remember their Irish heritage, no small feat when you consider that the third largest ethnic group in America is the Irish.  Of course, my family tends to add to that number, throwing ourselves whole-heartedly into our Irish history.  Mom says we'd probably be considered "Shanty Irish" and it's always amusing to see how my family interacts with each other.  People will fight, yell, bitch and snipe at each other....  And then 10 minutes later it's pretty much forgotten.  Why?  Because you're family, and that's what family does. 

So, go out and embrace your family.  Raise a glass in memory to the ones who are gone and enjoy time with the ones still here.  That's what I did. 

Valentine's Day Recap

My Valentine's Day went pretty well.  It started rather oddly though.  I awoke to a rather strange rattling noise coming from the front of the house.  I nudged Big Guy and told him to go see what his son had gotten into.  He listened for a minute and then said he knew what it was and it wasn't Little Guy.  He also said I needed to get up first. 

So, I stumbled from our bed, made my way into the kitchen, and stepped into water on the floor.  It wasn't anything too terrible though .  Big Guy had gotten up earlier and set the coffee maker to brew some coffee.  Unfortunately, he had forgotten to put the top down and it sprayed some of the water on our floor.  After we fixed that problem, I went into the family room and was greeted with an adorable teddy bear and chocolates. 

I received a small box of assorted chocolates from Big Guy and a large Kiss from Little Guy, a 7 oz one!  We played games and watched TV and were generally happy relaxing together.  Little Guy went into the front room and played Lego Star Wars until he decided he wanted to play with actual Legos.  At that point, I had to put the brakes on relaxing. 

Big Guy and I told Little Guy that if he wanted to play with Legos, he had to clean up the floor in the front room.  Little Guy took us at our word.  With in five minutes, he came running back into the family room, telling us that he had finished.  Big Guy and I exchanged glances and then Big Guy went back to check.  Withing moments, he laughingly called me to the front room. 

Little Guy had indeed picked up the floor - and covered the sofa and his car table with his toys.  After I finished laughing, I told Big Guy we needed to do something about this.  So, a portion of our Valentine's Day was spent cleaning the front room. 

After we finished, Little Guy watched the Star Wars movies and played with his legos.  When Big Guy finished playing his video game, he went in there and "helped".  It was adorable.  I asked Little Guy what his dad was doing and got the response, "He's building!" Even more adorable, Big Guy and Little Guy came out to show me the "cool" space ship Big Guy had made. 

While my Valentine's Day may not have been red-hot and sexy, it was definitely a sweet day...  More a nice shade of pink. 

Post-Holiday Blues

I have homemade chili bubbling away in the crockpot and Little Guy is (hopefully) napping. It's still a bit nippy in the house because I have to keep the heat set at 65 to avoid a massive heat bill. But I also recognize that I am dealing with post-holiday crankiness.

Post-holiday crankiness happens to a lot of people. The coming down from the build up and excitement of the holidays leads to depression and unhappiness. I get cranky after the holidays. Luckily, I recognize it and try to offset the crankiness. But, the whole post-holiday crankiness bothers me. Because it bothers me, it tends to make me crankier. This makes for an unhappy dpwnward spiral. One thing I know I need to do, that will break the spiral, is get back into a routine.

My current routine has flown to the winds. It used to be: Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays were teaching days; Wednesdays were my "at-home days", used to get chores and the niggly bits out of the way; Fridays were my days with my mom. Weekends were reserved for Big Guy and our activities. Then, two things happened. Mom's car broke down and eliminated the Friday routine for the time being, and the holidays hit. This event nixed all other routines.

As Big Guy will attest to, I do not do well with change. It is an unfortunate and unpleasant side effect of the ADD, but there it is. A change in routine throws me off and affects me mentally and emotionally. Even worse, the ADD also makes it that much more difficult to get back on track. And if I'm not careful, my distraction can really upset the balance in the household. Big Guy and I are not fanatic cleaners, and Little Guy, for as much as I adore him, is a hurricane and a tornado combined.

What this means is that if I get distracted, nothing happens until I throw a fit because now the house is a complete mess. Big Guy and Little Guy watch me in complete and total amazement while I start slamming things around trying to get things cleaned up. I know the easiest thing to do would be to pick up gradually, but it never seems to happen.

It's times like this that I wish I hadn't married a guy whose cleanliness threshold was so much lower than mine. On the other hand, if Big Guy is the way he is and nothing happened around the house with Crazy Ex unless he did it, what must her house be like now?

Yes, Reader, there is a Santa Claus

PhotobucketThe holidays were, of course, really busy around here. Thanksgiving came and went. We ate turkey, visited with family, and had a great time. Then the preparations for Christmas kicked into high gear.

I am in love with Christmas. I love everything about Christmas. In fact, Big Guy states that Santa probably doesn’t love Christmas as much as I do. I can’t help it though. How can you not love a season that promotes peace and joy? I was the kid who embraced Santa beyond the age of rational thought, the one who knew “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” practically by heart. And, were you to ask me today, I would devoutly answer that yes, indeed, there is a Santa Claus.

It is immensely important in today’s fast paced world that we embrace and enjoy the spirit of giving and sharing. There are probably none better than I who recoginize the difficulty involved in holding on to peace and joy. The months leading up to Christmas 2009 were… difficult… to put it mildly. But, Christmas gives us all an opportunity to embrace the better aspects of our personalities.

I made it a point, this year to share what I had, what extras we had, with others. Selling them would have given us some much needed extra cash, but it would not have given us a much needed c balm to our spirits. In sharing what we had without trying to earn money, I believe we made an important spiritual advance. I felt better and people out there, most likely worse off than us, had a better holiday because of us.

So, yes, at 30 years old, I can proudly say that I do believe in Santa. I believe that the spirit and potential lies in all of us. And I think that if we were to each embrace that happy, peaceful, and giving side of our personalities on a more regular basis, the situation we find our world in would not exist. But, I guess I am an idealist.

Happy Thanksgiving

I’m still alive and kicking. And around here, we’re preparing for the holiday season. The past couple months have been exceedingly busy and involved classes, Halloween, and a dead computer. Now, though, things seem to be settling down and I am trying to get a hold of myself in an attempt to prepare for the upcoming holiday season.

For Thanksgiving, we’re visiting family and eating heartily. I made “Russian Tea Cakes” to take to both Big Guy’s parents and my mom’s meals. These things are delectable, delicious, and completely fattening. The recipe I follow is the same one my mom uses from Betty Crocker , with our own little differences of course. We can never make a recipe without improving it somehow.

And on Friday, we did participate in the rampant consumerism that is Black Friday, but we also got something good out of it. We ended up NOT buying at any of the major stores, for by the time we arrived, all the deals were gone. What they had left was not enough to tempt us to brave those lines. So, we went to breakfast and then went to Big Lots where there weren’t as many people and the deals were much better. While there, we did find some good gifts for Little Guy to open Christmas Morning.

For the rest of the evening, I imagine we’ll play games, watch movies, and eat pizza. And for that, I am truly thankful.

Russian Tea Cakes
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
3/4 cup finely chopped nuts (I used pecans)
1/4 teaspoon salt
Powdered sugar

1. Heat oven to 350ºF.
2. Mix butter, 1/2 cup powdered sugar and the vanilla in large bowl. Stir in flour, nuts and salt until dough holds together. (If it still seems dry, cover and place in a warm spot for a few minutes. The butter will start to bind the dough together a bit more.)
3. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place about 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet.
4. Bake 10 minutes or until set but not brown. Remove from cookie sheet. Cool slightly on wire rack.
5. Roll warm cookies in powdered sugar; cool on wire rack. Roll in powdered sugar again.