10/13/09

Whew! Where to begin? Tonight we had a meeting with the hospice peeps at the hospital where Dad is. He’s obviously not doing well. No decision was actually made yet, but I think it’s a good possibility.


He’s been in the hospital for a week or so this time. He was falling a lot and Mom was getting concerned that he had pneumonia again. So after his last fall when he hit his head pretty hard, she took him back in and he did have it, along with bronchitis again. The poor guy’s been thru the mill! He hates being in the hospital, and I don’t blame him. The nurses are afraid to even get him out of bed, in case he falls.

Angel also FINALLY brought her grades up enough where she was able to cheer at the football game tonight! Woohoo! So I was able to catch the first half before having to leave for the meeting. The Eppler Chieftains beat the Shelby Wildcats, 6-0! Eppler was apparently the Detroit Lions of the school district, because when they won the first game, it was the first time they’d won in 4 years!! Now they’ve won 2 !!

She's the back spot (far left on bottom of stack)

Saturday, Angel and I went over to Mom & Dad’s house to help Mom get caught up on laundry & misc. other things. Luckily she was there, but she had a couple bad moments. What could I say? I just put my arms around her and held her. She said I didn’t need to do anything, because she’ll have plenty of time to get it done soon enough. That sounded pretty ominous to me. So she had just come home to take a shower & change, then went back to the hospital. I did about 4 loads of laundry, unloaded the dishwasher, wiped down counters, took out the trash, had Angel run the vac. Just little things so Mom didn’t have to worry about it.

Sigh. I had a moment with laundry-room envy. That was tough to overcome.

On a more cheerful note – after we finished there, we stopped at Lowe’s and got the supplies we needed to make our Halloween coffin! The shopping trip was an adventure, and the cashier was entertained that we were making it. Sunday was construction day! OK, we let Randy help, since his anal-ness was useful with the circular saw. But I measured & clamped on the fence, he just ran the saw for the big cuts. We’re not done with it yet. We still have to add the trim, paint & attach the hinges & handle to the lid. I’m hoping to have it done before Saturday, but it’s not exactly high on my list of priorities.

She got to hold the wood while we cut it.

My boss (a MSU fan) says she can be buried in that shirt!

She fits in the coffin perfectly!

We also got the cemetery put up! I was cutting down plants in the front yard, so I had Angel out there driving stakes into the ground (yes – I let her use a hammer and yes – she did hurt herself several times!) It looks rather cute. I thought I was going to go back without her knowing and move some around, but I decided not to. Old cemeteries aren’t perfectly spaced out in rows, so why should ours be?

My man-eating plant

Man-eating plant babies

This Saturday is Angel’s Halloween birthday party with her friends. She took the invites in last week and this week, after sending reminder notes to school with her – we’ve finally heard from 2. I can’t decide if its ignorance or just rudeness that no one has called. That is my newest pet-peeve: the non-RSVP. That’s OK. Fewer are easier to deal with. I’d rather deal with 2 or 3 girls than the original 12 she invited. We can do more. I’m thinking of taking them down to the park after it gets dark so we can go for a spooky walk. Maybe Holland Ponds because it’s more in the woods……yeah!

Fewer girls means less food needed, too. I already got the stuff to make kitty litter cake, so that’s a gimme. BBQ lil smokies in the crock pot (BBQ baby fingers!) and screw it; maybe we’ll just order pizza. The ideas keep a-rollin’ !

Wow, so that’s about all the excitement here. The Wings lost tonight – booooo! Work seemed to be picking up for a while, but it’s evened out now so I still have a lot of time to waste during the day. I got 5% of my pay back- only 10% more to go to get back to where I was in June ‘08 !! Randy actually got a raise at his work – the first one in 3 years. But he never had any cuts like I did. And he still got a yearly bonus. Nada for me! I got a turkey before the holidays last year – that was my bonus. We were supposed to take it to Arkansas with us for his Mom to fix for Christmas, but we forgot it. Ooops. Guess I better fix it soon before I get another this year!

Out!

Random cuteness.......think I'll start ending my posts ths way!

Jack - supervising coffin building activities

Chester - the King of the Cokes!

9/29/09

Fall has arrived! We are going to be kicking the furnace on soon! It’s going down to 45 tonight and 36 tomorrow night – BRRRR!

Well, today Angel missed cheering at her first football game. The athletic director sent home a note yesterday saying she was already failing geography with a 54% ! That takes some talent, since she’s only been in school 3 weeks. So no cheer this week for her. She can practice with the squad, but she sat out today. And the Chieftains won, too! The first time in 4 years I heard! Guess they’re the Detroit Lions of the school district.

Yesterday was her birthday. We got her the entire hardcover Twilight series of books, plus the nice UofM sweatshirt she’d picked out at the mall. Guess we’re shooting on having her party on the 17th, so it cam be a Halloween party. I’m looking forward to it, planning it anyway. I love Halloween!

Sunday we went to the Westview Orchard for our annual family trip. Mom & Dad didn’t go, so it was the 3 of us, Laurie, Lisa, Jamie, Catie & Austin. We had a good time. That orchard has funner stuff to do. They have a petting farm, a giant slide, wooden farm equipment, giant straw pile, horse-drawn wagon rides, tractor pulled wagon rides, a 6 acre corn maze and jumping pillows. That was a riot! Can’t even describe how fun they were. Altho I must have twisted my knee pretty bad, since it’s still killing me. Totally worth it! I guess they have a theme every year, so this year was MSU. 

Lisa & Angel on the jumping pillow.

Me on the jumping pillow.

Angel, Lisa & me with chicks.

This is a map of the corn maze. Covered 6 acres !

Friday night, Angel had her friend Taylor spend the night again. We took them to go see “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”. That was really cute! Randy and I are so mean! They took off walking ahead of us to the car afterward. So Randy and I ducked over to the next row where the car was and they didn’t see us. We stayed down behind other cars and peeked at them thru windows. A couple were getting into their SUV in the row where the girls were and they could see us, hiding, so they must have sat there and watched us a few minutes. Until the girls went over a row in the wrong direction. We were cracking up. Then these other people pulled out and slowed down to tell us we were mean. We just cracked up harder – I said “I know- but it’s SO fun!” and they laughed and drove away. We finally took off running to the car and got in. Randy started honking the horn until the girls figured out it was us. They tried to play it off like they knew where we were. Yeah, sure.

What really caught me off guard was...apparently they had gone online before I got home from work and Angel decided she wants to attend MSU. They have a good vet school and she wants to be a veterinarian. Plus it’s one of the cheapest universities in the state! And she can get the first 2 years out of the way by going to Macomb Community College to their vet program. I hope she holds on to that thought.

So the dance situation changed again. She’s taking 4 classes right now! Terina from the studio was going to change around tap & technique, but someone else was driving in from BFE for the technique class, so she couldn’t change them. Angel said she was willing to try dancing lyrical, which thrilled Terina. The catch is…it has to be taken in conjunction with ballet. Angel wasn’t too excited about ballet, but is trying it. Terina said if she didn’t like it, she could get back into tap after cheer was over for the season. And until then, she’s only charging me for 3 classes – woohoo! I sort of like this better, because she’s got 2 classes per night, instead of all of them back to back.

Anyway, Randy’s over there watching something about the best classes of submarines and it sounds pretty interesting, so I must go watch, too! Later!

Note - Friday is the first Red Wings game of the season - WOOHOO!!

9/15/09

Whew! It’s been crazy at work! I guess that’s what I get for taking 7 days off work, going back for 2 1/2 - then taking Friday afternoon off! It’s sure obvious that work has picked up, but the amount of paper on my desk!


Hmm, where to begin? On Labor Day we took Angel to the Renaissance Festival for her first time. We had a good time. Man, it’s easy to spend a lot of $$ there! Next year we think we’re going to dress up. Randy wants to wear a kilt in the family tartan and we’re supposed to match him, since we’re his “women”. I think it’s going to be his “woman” and his “fairy”. We just missed the end of the jousting, but we caught the Ded Bob Show!! Yay! We got to go up after & get pics with him. Angel wanted me to go with her. Bob told her he likes the skinny ones and if she washed her hair once in a while things wouldn’t grow in it. He liked my fox tail that I tied on the back of my skort (so I shook it at him). Randy was wearing khaki pants, a flowered shirt and a straw hat, so Bob told him that the Jimmy Buffett concert was last week. It was pretty funny.

So Angel started school on the 8th. Sigh. She’s adjusted well to having to go to 6 different classrooms and a locker for her stuff. I don’t know how long this will last, but she says she likes Science!! And I’ve seen proof that she’s learning something. Last night at dinner she was telling us all the months and days of the week in Spanish. She’s never had it before, so I know its new knowledge! Wooooooo! She’s pretty tweaked that on Thursday & Friday, she gets home before me. She’s got her own key and I leave a list of stuff for her to do. It’s only for 45 minutes or so. No biggie.

She also tried out for the 7th grade cheer squad and made it! It really shouldn’t have been surprising. She’s got the personality and the volume for it! It was funny that after try-outs on the second day of school, she told me that they had to do stuff in front of the boys trying out for football. Hellloooooo? Get used to it! Who do you think you’re going to be cheering for? Random trees in the field?? The uniforms are really cute. I think it’s odd that the junior high & high school have the same school colors & mascots. Black, white & orange and they’re the Chieftains.

By Christmas, that kid will have buns of steel! She’s also still dancing – and I let her do 3 this year – tap, hip hop & jazz. Luckily she’s got a really nice studio owner & a really nice coach, since Terina switched classes around as much as she could for her, and Coach Stacy is letting her leave ½ hour early on Wednesdays so I can get her to tap. It was either that or she’d have to drop tap for ballet or lyrical – neither of which I could see her doing. But cheer is only thru football season, I think the last game is November 10, around there. Hope she doesn’t get much homework on Wednesdays, since her last class will be over at 7:45 !!

Randy finally broke down and went for his first checkup with a doctor since I’ve known him. His dentist is more evil than mine, so they take his blood pressure before they do stuff and it’s been high the past couple times he’s gone. So they referred him to a doctor. He’s got an appointment for a physical and he already knows they’re going to tell him to lose weight. He’s had over a year to hop on the bandwagon with me!! But I haven’t bugged him about it, except to encourage him to go on walks with us. I was waiting for him to figure it out on his own.

I took a little break from Weight Watchers. My pass was up, so I took 2 weeks off to recharge and get my head back straight. Last Thursday was my “first” weigh-in. I’d gained 2 pounds, but it was also right before my TOM so that’s not too terrible. I’m still in those same damn 5 pounds that I’ve been in since May. One day I’ll break that.

Last Friday, Catie and I were supposed to be extras in a commercial that Laurie's boss was making.  She works for a partner of Geoffrey Feiger, the attorney who got famous defending Jack Kevorkian back in the day.  So we both took off work and were almost to Laurie's office to get her when she called and said the shoot had been cancelled.  Boooo!  We were looking forward to our 15 minutes of obscure fame!  But we had lunch with Laurie and got a tour of the building.  All I got to say is WOW.  Laurie's office is across the hall from the TV studio.  All of the floors were capeted in burgundy carpet with a burgundy & cream marble tile edging (more on that in a minute).  There's an atrium just down the hall from Laurie's office that has a waterfall (Fieger Falls) & pond & giant bamboo plants, etc.  There is no shortage of ego with this man.  There are pictures of him literally everywhere. Some of them are pretty odd, too.  The worst one was "Geoff" wearing something like a cheesecloth diaper (he does not have a nice bod, either!), standing with his arms out like he's been crucified, wrapped in tubing and holding IV bags in each hand.  Yeah.  Disturbing!  We went up and peeked in his office, too.  His cute little blonde secretary came out and asked if we wanted to see his office, so she took us in. He's got a bobble head of himself on his desk!  Then she asked if we wanted to see his bathroom.  We thought that was odd, but OK.  His bathroom is about the size of my kitchen/dining room.  Everything was that burgundy & cream marble, glass & chrome.  Huge walk in shower with a bench and glass doors, double vanity with huge mirror, the works.  I saw where the commode was, but didn't look to see if it was special at all.  I'm sure it had to be.

Saturday night, Laurie, her friends Michelle & Ashley, Catie, Lisa & me all went to see the Rocky Horror Show at Meadowbrook Music Theater. OMG!  That was so damn funny!  I'd never seen it before, altho I had a basic idea of what it was. And it was total audience participation.  We could buy "'virgin bags" filled with props.  They had a newspaper, squirt gun, goofy hats, bells, cards, a flashlight - all sorts of stuff.  During the performance, they'd put what you're supposed to do on the screen (use your squirt gun to make it rain & hold your newspaper over your head, etc) and they'd post what you're supposed to yell, and you'd have to get up and dance, etc.  Fun fun fun.  There was a costume contest, too.  A lot of people dressed up as characters from the story.  The winner got a gift certificate to this leather store and the runners up got to dance the Time Warp on stage with the cast.  It was hysterical!!   I will totally go see that again! 

The next big event is the girl’s birthday. She wants to invite 9 girls over for a sleepover. I have no idea where she thinks everyone is going to sleep, but we’re going to put “sleepover optional” on the invites. They can come over for the party and leave after if need be. She’s thinking about having it a week or two after her b-day so we can have a Halloween party. That would be a riot!

Peace out!

9/2/09

~sniff~

I took Angel to school orientation tonight.  She got her class schedule, but they said some kid's may be changing and to basically ignore this one.  She'll get a possibly-revised schedule on the first day.  But we wandered around and looked for classrooms so she could get the gist of things.  I'm not too thrilled that she has lunch in the middle of her science class, but I guess they would know if that works or not.

They said to expect up to 90 minutes of homework per night - and this is how they recommend budgeting the time.
15 minutes looking for the assignment
11 minutes on the phone with friend to get the assignment
23 minutes complaining about how mean the teacher is and how he/she hates kids
8 minutes in the bathroom
6 minutes staring at the wall
10 minutes finding a snack
7 minutes looking at the TV guide
10 minutes waiting for Mom or Dad to do the assignment for them.

They also talked about the long-term project....
-is brought home the day before due date
-is to be started at 9:30 PM and finished no earlier than 11:50 PM
-requires multiple trips to WalMart and/or Meijer
-said trips are to be done after 11 PM
-one person (not necessarily the student) will end up in tears
-one parent will be up all night finishing the project
-the other parent will call the school and say the student is sick.

I think what really made these funny was the fact that it was on a PowerPoint presentation by the assistant principal. 

Afterward, we went to Taco Bell.  As we sat there, Angel turned to me like she was holding a microphone and asked me to tell the audience how I really felt about her going to junior high.  I thought that was pretty funny.  I told "the audience" that I was scared and concerned and happy.  She thought I was a nut for being scared for her.  I told her that it was just because it's so different from what she's ever done and it's just a Mom thing.  But over all I'm proud of my baby girl.

She's going to go to the cheerleading meeting after school on the first day.  Oh fun!  They offer both sideline cheer (for actual sporting events) and competition cheer.  I think she needs to stick with sideline for now.  I don't really want to deal with competition.  She'd have to try out for that anyway and I'm sure they'd pick girls with cheer experience - of which she has none.

So....vacation is nice so far.  The weather has been gorgeous, mid 70s - can't get any more perfect than that!!  Monday we just hung out around the house all day.  Yesterday we went to the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village again.  The Rock Stars' Car & Guitars display was pretty neat.  They had ZZ Top's Eliminator, one of Elvis's Cadillacs, one of Alice Cooper's, a couple of the Metallic guy's cars, Janis Joplin's Snoop Dogg, the original Soundgarden van, Cheryl Crow's mustang, Miley Cyrus's Smart Car (that we got to get into) and of course, one of Kid Rock's (that actually had up to date tabs on the plate!) to name a few.  My computer's having fits, so I haven't downloaded my camera yet.  I'll put them up as soon as the exorcism is complete.

The Museum is really cool.  There's a farm equipment section, cars, planes, trains & bikes!  We even got to help build a Model T.  The workers there said that car has been disassembled & assmebled 483 times.  The first time we stopped by, Angel got to put a bolt in to hold the body to the chassis.  The second time, she & Randy put in the radiator.  If we would have gone back, we could have had our pictures taken in it, but we didn't stick around.     

Then we went into Greenfield Village so Randy could check out the Menlo Park area.  They have Thomas Edison's lab & machine shop & stuff.  It's pretty neat.  Then we planned on getting a frozen custard, but the hours changed since the last time we were there and are now only open on the weekends.  Booooo!  Guess it was a sign.  So we rode on the carousel and came home.

We met Barry on the way home to get the other half of my birthday present. It was delivered to Randy's work, and since he's not there this week....Barry grabbed it for us.  He got me a Yaesu VX-6R dual band handy talkie to go with my 7900 for the car.  It's been on the charger since last night, but I don't feel like messing with it right now.  I can play tomorrow.

I got a new windshield on my car today!  It's been cracked for a while, thanks to a rock thrown up by a passing truck.  It's so shiny!  Love it!  And then we got the back door awning put back up.  It was a much bigger project than it should have been.  Guess when they built on the back part of the house, they were cutting costs and put the studs on 24 inch centers instead of the normal 16 inch.  And of course a stud sensor can't pick that up thru the siding & cheap foam sheet insulation.  But we figured it out and it's finally up.  Tomorrow we'll fight with the front one.

Well, that's all the excitement so far!  I'm out.

8/30/09

What in the heck ??!?!?!?!  Where did summer go?  It's supposed to go down to 48 degrees tonight !!  It's still August, for Pete's sake!  Randy and I were sitting outside talking this afternoon and we realized that we hadn't seen any robins for a while; the cedar waxwings came thru early to clear out the cherry tree (even before they were fully ripe!); the burning bush is thinking about changing color; we've noticed trees starting to change; and one of my mums is already blooming.  **sigh** I guess it's inevitable.  Fall is lurking.

 
I had a good birthday yesterday!  Randy and I went to Downtown Detroit and did some wandering around.  Mainly we went to Joe Louis Arena for HockeyFest.  It was kind of neat.  First we walked around the outer area where the concession stands are (photo ops!).  There was all sorts of stuff to do down in the arena.  They had mini-arenas set up so kids could play goalie (in full goalie pads, too) and have whiffle balls shot at them; see how hard you could slap the puck, all sorts of fun stuff.  They had a band playing a bunch of cover songs, too.  We went back to where they had past players giving autographs, but we'd never heard of the guy there.  We even got to tour the locker room!  That was pretty neat.  The tunnel is awesome! 

I got Kronwall'd

Stanley!  Stanley!  Stanley!

Us & Al

Outside the Olympia Club underneath the stands

Randy on the Zamboni!

Us on the bench.

Leaving the locker room to the tunnel to the ice.

It was generally a very neat day.  I enjoyed my birthday very much.  The weather was perfect, we got to sit and watch freighters go by on the Detroit River, we strolled the Riverwalk again.  Nice.  I almost was able to forget that I turned 36, even tho my boss thought I wasn't even 30 yet.  She just apparently can't add, or she forgot I was in the Navy for 8 years.  I'll take it as a compliment.  Oh yeah, Randy got ne a nice new radio for my car.  A Yaesau FT-7900 R/E dual bander.  I'm going to like it.  I actually read the manual and figured out all the buttons & stuff.  I'm going to have him mount a mobile speaker on my dashboard so I can hear it better. 

 

So we're officially on vacation now.  We'll both go back to the grind on the 9th.  Monday the 7th is Labor Day, and Tuesday the 8th is Angel's first day of Junior High ~ sniff ~.  I have to be home for that!  We have some ideas of what we're going to do, but nothing concrete. Like the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village and the Renaissance Festival. Jim, AB8JR is going to come over one night to help put an antenna on the roof.  Then that's probably about all.  Angel has orientation at school on Wednesday evening, so we won't wander far that day.  But first order of business tomorrow morning - grocery shopping.  I cleaned out the fridge tonight & it's pretty empty.  Yay.

I took some time off Weight Watchers.  My current membership was up, so instead of renewing right away, I decided to wait for a couple weeks.  I'll go back on the 10th.  The reasoning behind this is for me to recharge and get my head back in the game (cue High School Musical song).  Then I'll go back in there all refreshed and ready to get back on track.  My leader told us one night just recently that she'd had a woman who'd lost 100 pounds come in and pretend like she was starting WW for the very first time - just to break a plateau.  I thought about it and it's a good idea.  I've been getting way too complascent.  It's funny that now I can see little things that have already become a habit!  Not a bad thing at all!

Alrighty then.  I need to go put some sheets on the bed and hop in the shower before crawling in them, so I need to take off!  Later all!