Holy crap!!!!

I just realized that this Saturday marks the day that I officially become a mom of not only one, but TWO fricken teenagers! This ain't right. Seriously people. I am not old enough to have 2 teens. It can't happen.... but it's gonna, isn't it? Holy crap.

And the last 13 years went.... where?

Unbelievable. What I wouldn't give for those terrible twos again. And don't any of you toddler moms come chewing my ass telling me how insane I am for saying that - I lived through the terrible twos, twice. And the terrifying threes... and guess what? It's a piece of fricken cake compared to the years ahead. Now instead of my sweet babies crying and running towards me when they are hurt, they run for their room and slam the door and scream "LEAVE ME ALONE!".

Terrible twos. Ha!

You ain't seen a tantrum until you've seen a PMS crazed teen.

Bestest Friend & Bestest Sister

Remember my Insurance sucks donkey parts post the other day? Well.. my bestest friend is home from the hospital as of yesterday. I can't even describe how that makes me feel... sick, sad, pissed off... I could go on and on about how I feel, but I pretty much said it all the other day, so I'll just shut up and keep you updated.

Yesterday I went out in the bitter cold and snow to take pictures of my favorite sister's family. (I only have 1 sister though, so it's pretty easy to call her my favorite) I wish we would have had more time - and warmer temps. Everyone was freezing and in a hurry and I just think the pics could have been a little better. They turned out ok, I mean - they turned out good, but ... I don't know, maybe I just am my worst critic.

This one is raw... I have about a dozen of them that my sister has to pick from (I weeded out the closed eyes, looking away, stupid looks already).
But that is my sister's family. Her 4 kids, plus my nephews girlfriend, Mandy, who should be his wife by now. He is the oldest and they've been together since they were in high school. I tried to get a pic of just them together, but by then I was freezing and I took the camera off the tripod and Neil wouldn't cooperate anyway..... if there was a good pic, my shivering hands screwed it up.
But ... I did get the most awesome picture of my absolutley gorgeous nieces! I played around with this one a bit so I could frame it for myself.Aren't they just the most adorable people in the world? The one on the very left is my Goddaughter, so she's more special than the other two (just kidding! Well.... maybe not).

Flying Hamsters

So I'm sitting here bored out of my mind. I don't know whats up, but it seems like everyone who is a member on InsanityCafe has either had their tongue ripped out by a madman or had their fingers cut off by some wicked doctor who plans on doing finger transplants because nobody is fricken talking on there today. I've played so many games of Hamster Flight I feel like a flying hamster on a mission for rockets with fire coming out of them. It's crazy. I'm going to dream I'm in a hamster ball tonight, I swear.

I am just in shock that it's already December. I just don't understand where this year went. It's going to be 2009... do you remember how we all were so nervous about the coming of 2000? That didn't seem like that long ago, but yet it's a year short of a decade.

I snuck Demon #2 a benedryl tonight. Flame me with your comments, I don't give a rats ass. Until you've lived with this child, shut up. I couldn't take it anymore. Even she mentioned she's more hyper than normal. Good God. I really need to get her in to get her TSH levels checked again because even she is wondering if her thyroid isn't whacked out. I hope it's the case because her next stop is either boot camp or a foster home. Or a circus. Something. She's a difficult child to deal with and usually I have no troubles at all (the husband on the other hand... well, when you fall from the same tree, watch out! Those two are like oil & water). The past couple days I'm ready to just string her up by her toenails and duct tape her to the ceiling. Lord, tell me it's just a phase. She's got 3 months before she officially becomes a teenager... I just don't think it can get much worse.

But then again, Demon #1 spends her waking moments walking around with a permanant frown on her face. No, not a frown - a pissed off at any one of the adult persuasion look. She whines and argues and ... ok, I admit it. Demon #2 is looking like an angel now.

Dirty Sinks & Flushing Toilets

This morning my face just felt like it needed a good washing. This is something I usually do at night, but this morning I just wanted a clean face. So I went into the bathroom, let Serena drink for a little bit and finally got tired of waiting for her to get that perfect drip to drink to satisfy her feline OCD and I turned the water on hot.

Funny how fast a cat will jump off a counter when their head gets soaked.

I splash hot water on my face.. opens up the pores, you know. It's funny, I always think of a sauna when I wash my face. It's like it's my reminder on what to use - hot or cold. So I wet my face down and grab Demon #2's "Morning Burst" facial cleanser. Morning Burst - everyone can use one of those, right? I lather it up and start rubbing it all over my face. Soap near my eyes doesn't bother me so I'm rubbing it into my eyebrows and all over. Maybe it's an art form, but I can accomplish this without getting any in my eyes. I'm doing this as I'm looking at my horrid reflection in the mirror. When did my eyes get so... sunken in? Must have been somewhere between the birth of the 1st & 2nd demon.

So I'm looking in the mirror and I look down.

A washcloth that needs to be washed.

The sink is dirty. And full of bubbles. If it can clean my face it can clean the sink, right?

So I grab the washcloth and start wiping out the sink. I don't know how we get this brown film behind the faucet, but we do. I don't have any now because I cleaned it off. Yuck. Then I notice the dried toothpaste on the counter. Doesn't anyone see the toothpaste fall off the toothbrush? I suppose it's just like the slippers that are right now laying in the middle of the kitchen... Mom will take care of it.

So I clean off the toothpaste that's dried... really dried to the counter. This actually needs a fingernail to get all of it off. Yuck. Must have been there for days. As I'm doing this I look over and see all the hair that's accumulating in the corners of the counter. No, it's not pet hair. It's human hair. I handed down a wonderful gene to the demons - thick and constant shedding hair. I wipe off all of the counter. All clean. Wow. I've accomplished quite a bit before 7:30 in the morning!

I turn around and see the toilet. Ahhh yes, that hasn't been cleaned in a week so I grab the cleaner from under the sink and start squirting it into the toilet. I turn around to grab the toilet brush - those things are actually really disgusting when you think about it, you know that? I reach down ------

OUCH!! WHAT THE HELL?!?!?! WHY ARE MY EYES BURNING????

Ooops. I was washing my face, wasn't I... and I sorta got sidetracked and forgot to rinse the soap off my face. It's now found its way into my right eye and is burning like a ******-******!!! I rinse it off quick and so one of those hand-as-a-cup-of-water eye washing tricks, dry my face off as Demon #1 comes into the bathroom. I go out and grab my now-cold cup of coffee. I dump the cold coffee and get myself a nice hot refill.

Then I hear it....

The toilet bowl cleaner is flushed down the toilet.

My bathroom counter & sink is clean, though.

And so is my face.

Praying for Garage Sales and Food Parties

I'll be MIA for the next few days - not that I'm regularly blogging or anything anyway. I've got the TT to magically appear at 11:59 tonight so hopefully (got your fingers crossed?) it will be ready for all you TT'ers tomorrow.

Why am I going to be MIA? Two words - Garage. Sale. Yep. We're dumb. We're having a garage sale tomorrow - Saturday. It's at my parents house, but I've got a table full of stuff there and I'll have to help collect the moola as it comes in. Our town is having thier annual "Pioneer Days" which some people refer to as the greatest show on dirt. I don't think it's all that special, but it brings in thousands of people to town to stand and stare at 100 year old farm equipement. Yeehaww.

So somewhere down the line someone thought it would be a great idea to have a garage sale the same weekend because... well, there is thousands of people in town. Then someone else copied them, someone copied them and now we basically have an unoffical city-wide garage sale.

I also had this brilliant idea to help my sister get some credit at a Tastefully Simple show she had a month or so ago and I am having a party on Friday. Yep, in the middle of all this crap. What the hell was I thinking? So tomorrow (tomorrow is Thursday, right?) I have to find some time to sneak home and make a bunch of sample dips and stuff. Yep, these shows YOU make the stuff for the show, it's kinda cool.

Oh yeah... and somebody is coming to fix our furnance in the morning.

Oh... and in an hour I've got to be at church for a confirmation meeting with the demons. Demons & church - they go to together because our pastor finds it incredibly wonderful to give his bible school/confirmation students caffienated soda and candy. He's been talked to about this... many times.... and he pulls his hair out every week, but yet... the next week? Guess whats there for the kids? But you know what? The kids absolutley adore our pastor and thats a good thing.

So if I am not clinically insane by Sunday... someone just admit me anyway 'cause it'll be a'coming!

No parents on leashes!

I know this is going to be the silliest gripe ever, but here goes:

When I was a kid, I didn't want anything to do with my parents. I didn't want to be associated with them, nothing. Then, summer vacations came and mine consisted of running around town with friends. We didn't care where... we just went. Good times.

Now lets fast forward to now. My kids. I swear to God I didn't drop them on their heads as babies... maybe Trucker did, but I didn't. Whats wrong with them?

Saturday, as I've mentioned, was our town's festival... my kids only went uptown (which is 3 blocks away) when I went. I tried giving them money to go buy food, play games, whatever.. other family members tried.. they wouldn't go!

Sunday a church here in town had their bazaar. Trucker & I took the girls. We had to basically force them to play games. They didn't want to leave our sides. We PUSHED them towards the games and told them we'd be over sitting on a bench.

"You are going to ditch us!"

WHAT? Our kids are worried about us ditching them?!!?!? We walked up there.... it's not like they would be stranded or anything. They knew the way home.

There are kids running all over that place with no parents on leashes...why are our kids like this? On the way home we ran into Taryn's bff & her little sister. "Look Taryn! There's Kari and she's going somewhere without her mommy!"

Yeah, I know, sarcasm isn't the best way to talk to your kids, but I'm at my wits end here....

So now it's the week and yesterday I threatened that I was going to ground them FROM THE HOUSE. Go... go do something. Go bowling, go play in the arcade, go to the park, go find a friend, go to the Dairy Queen, go to the library... whatever! I even threw money at them!! Taryn has like 4 friends who live within walking distance... she didn't want to call them. "They are probably busy".

I know, I know, I should be happy that my kids stick at home instead of running around all over town doing things that I have no clue what they are doing, but I still just want them to at least... just once a week.... go be kids! This has how it's been all fricken summer long. I could understand if I wasn't always home with them, but you would think they would get sick of me. They are with me 24/7. I'm just asking for an hour...

Just rambling

So I sit here on this beautiful Tuesday morning and I can't seem to wake the hell up. I look in the mirror and I look like hell... holy crap are my eyes puffy! I slept, I don't know whats up. I felt like this yesterday morning, too. I don't like sleeping. I hate it. Just let me sleep and wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed like I'm used to.

Not this run over by a truck feeling. Yuck.

In case you haven't noticed, I've been slacking on the whole blogging thing. Writing and reading. I suck, I know. I have an excuse, although it's probably lame and you won't accept it anyway, but here goes -

I'm working. I know it's only the beginning of August, but do you realize how close Christmas is? Do you know how close Christmas shopping is? With me opening TheFishingBowl.com, I have been busting my ass getting SEO (search engine optimization - what you type in when you Google things) picture perfect and adding more designs. I really gotta get some new stuff into SledderWear, but who wants to do snowmobile designs when it's 80some degrees outside?

But then again, the husband went snowmobiling this last weekend... yep, he did. On grass... he went to a grass drags event up north. Yeah, they do that. They snowmobile on grass and actually race.

I swear it's a disease. It's gotta be.

(I stole the picture from the guys over at VintageSleds.com. There's more pics over there....)

Not to mention that dreaded (but welcomed!) back to school is sneaking up on us fast. I have to sit down and figure out what the demons need for school. Was looking at backpacks last night online... I wish they would make them like they used to. I'm sick of buying them every year.

Or maybe my demons are just that hard on them.

Both my babies demons are going to be in Jr High this year. No more elementary school for me. They grew up so fast... way too fast. Just 6 more years and they'll be out of the house....

Damn, thats not that long.

And to think, my bestest friend is starting over again with the kid thing.....

... and I giggle inside.

Another Memorial Wknd....

Well, we tried. Tornado Watches brought us home again today. Crappy weather all around - hazy, cold, windy. But we tried.

Thats the nice thing about camping at the lake - we are 5 miles from home. If the weather sucks, we can go home really easy. We aren't stuck having a miserable weekend if we don't have to.

But I did remember to grab my memory stick today, so I got a few pics.

The Husband

The lake was cold... 50some degrees, but that didn't stop Demon #2 from getting wet!

Saki's first trip to the lake... luckily she doesn't quite understand that she's looking at a big giant puddle. She still has 2 days until her stitches come out, so we had to keep her as dry as possible.

Next weekend we'll let her experience the real lake adventure!Demon #1 hung out in the hammock a lot.

and lets not forget the star of the day.... Happy Birthday Chico! He spent the day with his best friend, Saki, of course!As last week, I'm throwing this up for Weekly Winners, Weekend Snapshot and Camera Critters.

Upgrades, dog toys & sick kids

Yesterday was a nice, different kind of day.... sort of. It started out by realizing it had been 100 days of not smoking, then realizing Demon #2 was still sick, then being stuck between a rock & a hard place by my brother... and that was all before 8:30am!

The rock & a hard place is somewhere where I knew we'd end up eventually. See, my brother is a computer-nerd of sorts (either that or he fakes it really well). He helps me keep InsanityCafe forums running. Without him there just wouldn't be a forums to go to.

We've been behind on updating my site and the husbands site (which, of course, Patrick helps with, too) so yesterday was the day. If it wasn't yesterday, we probably would have been looking at a November or December date. Trying to get his schedules and mine (which stupidly is not very busy) to connect has been pretty much impossible.

So a comment was mention - I looked over at the husband and within 20 minutes we were out the door. It's over an hour drive to Patrick's, so we knew it would be almost an all day thing.

But it was so fun! I have the most wonderful, comical, sarcastic, humorous, caring brother a person could have. Seriously. You just can't be in a bad mood around him - it's just not possible. The only thing that sucked is that we had to leave.

Came home to a kid that was still sick (she wasn't dying... she's just sick. She was going to sit in front of the computer/tv all day long anyway, so whats the difference if I'm there to watch her or not?), 2 hyper dogs that had obviously been neglected attention-wise all day and a sink full of dirty dishes.

Speaking of dogs... Patrick has a Goldendoodle named Coco. Cutest big lump of fur you'll ever meet. Coco has this squeaky toy... all I know is that it looks like a dinosaur and it's made in China. If you try to feel the inside, it's not hallow, it's got some sort of material in it. It look indestructible and Patrick said they've had it since Coco was a pup (almost a year).... so it survived her puppy-chewing stage. He has absolutely no idea what this thing is called or what brand it is. We stopped at Petco and couldn't find anything close to it. Does anyone have any clue what this could be? We want to buy like 15 of them for Saki, because Lord knows she chews through everything and this is the toy for her!

Send a word out to your critter-friends and help us solve the mystery!

And that, my friends, is your Monday morning ramblings. Check out the work we did at the forums... join up, come talk to us! We love new people... we hand out cookies.

Oh... demon #2 is home sick today still.