Teasing

Today,Lillianna and I were listening to the Grease song "Beauty School Drop-Out" while we were in the car. We have heard this song many times and I have actually explained the song,line for line to her so she would understand it. After she heard ".....turn in your teasing comb and go back to high school," I could see her puzzled face in the rear view mirror. "Turn what,Momma? What is he saying?" she asked.

I burst into a fit of laughter. She has never seen a teasing comb. I remember that crazy metal comb from my childhood. My mom teased her hair all the time in between her appointments at the beauty parlor. To preserve her hair sprayed "do" she clipped squares of toilet paper all around her head before she went to sleep. Ahh, the memories.

I explained the teasing process to Lillianna. Her little face lit up and she exclaimed,"Oh,I know what it is. Nana still uses that comb." That made me laugh. I forgot my mom must still tease her hair in spots. Some things never change.

Are you old enough for your mom to have used a tease comb?

Easter preparations

Yesterday I warned Lillianna that if she didn't clean up her bedroom,the Easter Bunny wouldn't be able to hide her eggs because he would trip and fall on the clutter. Today,while I was at work,she made sure her room was picked up.
During my dinner break I called home and Lillianna informed me that she wrote up a questionnaire for the Easter Bunny to fill out.She always likes to be connected to the Easter Bunny,Santa Claus,Leprechauns and Tooth Fairy. She asked things like:

1) Are you a boy or girl bunny?
2) Do you have brothers or sisters?
3) What are your favorite movies?
4) What is your favorite fruit?
5) What is your favorite vegetable?

At 7:00pm she called me to say she was going to bed so that when I woke her up at 5:30am tomorrow morning,she wouldn't be in a bad mood.(I have to leave at 6am to go to work so she does the egg hunt before I go.) I told her she didn't have to go to bed now but she said,"Yes, I do.I don't want to be cranky with you on Easter,Mommy." Believe me, I don't want that either!

What Easter Bunny traditions does your family have?

My husband cracks me up!

I did not feel this was worthy of space on my blog but Rich is insisting that I write about what happened this morning.

I was sitting at the computer which is in the corner of our bedroom. Rich was standing in the doorway which is across the room on my right side. I was typing and looking at the computer screen and Rich began to talk. I continued typing but turned to look at him. That just about freaked him out.

He took a step backwards as if he had seen a venomous snake and shrieked,"I hate when you do that!" I just looked at him in confusion and asked,"Do what?" He said,"Type without looking at the keys." I rolled my eyes at him and in my usual sarcastic tone I said,"Ya, well it's called typing! "But you didn't even look!" he said accusingly.
I sighed. "Didn't you ever take typing in school? It was mandatory for us in 7th grade. We had to take half a semester whether we wanted to or not. Once you know where the keys are, you just type." Rich's typing technique is the good old "hunt and peck" method. He looks for the letter for a few seconds and then pounds it with one finger. It works but it's a little slow.

Rich said,"Ya, well it's not like the keys are in alphabetical order or anything."
I just laughed and said,"Didn't they offer typing at your school?"
He said,"Well I had my choice of typing or Home-Economics. I chose Home-Ec so that I could make breakfast for myself." How can you argue with that?

Is there anything that you do that you consider ordinary but your spouse thinks it's extraordinary?

Where have all the marriages gone?

It has kind of hit me lately that marriages are breaking up faster than a heart beat.
Two weddings that Rich and I attended within the past 10 years have already ended in divorce. I remember those weddings vividly. In both cases,the couples were certain they had found their soul mate. They looked lovingly at one another and it made Rich and I smile knowing they had found what we had found. At some point, one or both of them looked at their soul mate and wasn't satisfied with what they saw or with what they wanted. Suddenly their dreams weren't the same. How does that happen?

In March 2003,Rich and I separated for 6 months. When he left,he said it was for good and I believed him. I didn't understand how that could happen. With the help of a good marriage counselor,we were able to work things out and I have to say our marriage has been better than it had been in the years prior to him deciding to leave.

Many couples refuse therapy.Luckily it saved our marriage. Some husbands think it's stupid and just decide that it's not for them.Marriage is hard. Anyone who says it's a breeze is either lying or not married. I'm not saying it's impossible,I'm just not saying that everyday is not a day in Disney World.

I hear people at both of my jobs talk about the problems they are having in their marriage and I wonder what will happen? Will they work it out? Do they even want to?

I don't think that a man or woman who is in an abusive or neglectful marriage should stay because that is a situation no one should live with especially if they have children.I wonder if marriage has just become disposable over the years.

What do you think?

Folding the laundry

Usually I don't really think much about folding the laundry but today it hit me. All our clothes were intertwined,just like a family.Rich's shirt had Lillianna's Scooby Doo underwear in it's sleeve. Lillianna's little socks were next to my medium socks and Rich's tube socks.They looked like they were all hugging. They weren't stuck together,Rich uses Bounce in the dryer to prevent static,it was more like they looked comfortable being together all curled up in the laundry basket.
It made me smile.

Dear Mother Nature

Dear Mother Nature,
I know you must be very busy but I thought I would drop you a quick note to ask,"What the heck is going on?" I realize that we live in Massachusetts and our motto is,"If you don't like the weather,just wait a minute," but this Winter has been particularly rough on us. My daughter has had 6 or 7 snow days so far and at this rate she will be going to school until July.

Technically,Monday was the first day of Spring and Tuesday was such a warm and wonderful day we all ran around in a light jacket or with no jacket at all.My daughter wore a spring dress with pretty white tights to school. It gave us hope and brought us one step out of our Winter depression.Seeing the grass even though it was brown and not green made us feel better than looking at everything covered in white. Wednesday was a little cooler but the joy of Spring stayed in our hearts.

This morning,the white returned. I sent my child to school in her Winter jacket,boots,mittens and scarf. Snow was brushed off the cars. The plows are in the parking lot clearing out parking spaces. I am ironing a long sleeved shirt for work.

So, I just want to know.....when the heck is Spring coming to stay?

Sincerely,
Robin

I don't want to live like that

You can't turn on the t.v. or radio without hearing about Terri Schiavo. Her husband said she wouldn't want to live like this. Her parents have been heard to say they're not sure what her wishes were but they want her to keep living this way.
Is it really living to be severely brain damaged and being fed by a feeding tube? Is that living? I can't speak for Terri Shiavo but for me, I never want to live like that.

If there is ever a situation and I am found to be severely brain damaged,I hope they let me die with some type of dignity. I don't want to die a painful death of starvation,but give me a morphine drip and let me go peacefully. I don't want to be a burden to Rich and Lillianna. Why should their life be filled with the constant care of a wife and mother who isn't really there and who will never be there again? For me,it would be better to let me die and remember me when I was healthy and alive.

As for my mother and sister,I know they wouldn't be fighting to keep me alive like that. It wouldn't be what I wanted and they would know that.

G-d forbid this should ever happen to Rich or Lillianna,I wouldn't try to keep them alive if the doctors said there was no hope of recovery. No hope. As in they will never come out of this and never function on their own. How is that living?

If you were in this situation,what would you want?

Five year old child arrested in Florida

You have to read this! (For reasons unknown to me,if this link brings you to a map of the USA,click on Massachusetts then click out of the screen.Click on this link again and it should take you to the story.This is just another bizarre internet thing that makes no sense to me!! Sorry for the inconvenience.)

I am all for disciplining children who misbehave but I think removing the child from her kindergarten class in restraints and being taken to the police station is beyond ridiculous.
1.Give the kid a time-out.
2.Call the parents.
3.Send her to the principal's office.
4.Make an appointment with a therapist.
5.All of the above.

Call the police? When does that become an option for a 5 year old? Even if the child had emotional problems,I would think the first call would be to the parents. If Lillianna suddenly pitched some kind of fit in school I would hope I would get a call before the police did. I know how to handle her and can calm her down.I'm her mother,afterall.

What do you think?

I want to be a 1950's sit-com mom

I am so behind in my writing that I didn't even post my DotMoms post from yesterday until now. My latest post is about wanting to go back to a simpler time in life when families had time to be together and life wasn't so stressful. Well, at least not on t.v. and that's where I want to be.
You can read,I want to be a 1950's sit-com mom at DotMoms.

Thank you,Holly!!

I got an awesome suggestion on my post about BLTs from a reader who goes by the name hols.
I think it's safe to assume her name is Holly,right? (Don't give me the "When you assume you make an ass out of u and me," speech.I've made enough mistakes from assuming to know that's certainly true,thank you.)
So,anyway,she suggested adding avocado to a BLT.I had to think that one over and decided that the next time I had a BLT I would certainly give it a whirl.Well,next time was last night.

I have to say the only way I enjoy an avocado is with lemon and salt. I learned this when I lived in Israel and we grew them. So I sliced up an avocado and added it to my BLT. Even thinking about it now is making me drool.(Sorry,I had to wipe my chin!)
This has to be the most delicious food combination I have had in a long time. I loved it. I made little happy noises while I ate. Rich looked over at me and sarcastically asked,"Good?" There were no words to describe how I felt.

If you haven't tried avocado on a BLT you are missing out on something phenomenal.
Thank you so much,Holly!!

I've lost my enthusiasm.Let me know if you find it.

In the past two weeks I have felt like all of the joy has been sucked out of me.It's not like I can even say it's this one thing,because it isn't.It's a bunch of little irritants and situations I can't do anything about that are chipping away at me like a woodpecker pecking at my brain. I wake up in the middle of the night worrying about how this bill will be paid or how we will ever buy a house since we don't have the money to do it or how I'm going to add in hours to my work schedule when I am already working 36 hours a week. All I can think about is how we can make more money.It consumes my every thought and I hate it.

Some days,I just want to stay in bed and sleep the day away and forget that my life is not going in the direction that I had planned.I suppose it's in my favor that my life is so busy I can't even wallow in self-pity and give into the depression.Ok, so I wallow a little but I can't even indulge in a good old-fashioned pity party. I just have to keep going and do the best I can.

I try to focus on the fact that I have a wonderful husband and a very loving child. We are in good health (knock on wood),we live in a nice apartment and we both have jobs and cars.I know there are families who don't even have that much. I just wish life wasn't so difficult financially and that we could spend some time as a family on the weekends instead of me working all of the time. I am sure we will get on the right track eventually but until then it's pretty darn tricky to cope some days.

How do you cheer yourself up in the difficult times?

Short sleeves in the snow

When I picked Lillianna up from school today she was very unhappy.Every other Friday she has gym class,which she looks forward to. When I took out a heavy turtle neck sweater for her to wear this morning,she argued that it would be too hot in gym. She decided to wear a short sleeve shirt with her pink fluffy button down sweater over it. That way if she got hot she could remove the sweater. I agreed to that sensible argument.Anyone who knows me,knows I hate being too hot!

Apparently,while her class was in gym,an announcement was made throughout the school that the fire alarms were going to be tested. This did not reach Lillianna's gym class due to some overhead problem with the P.A. system. When the alarm went off,Mr.Smith,the gym teacher, thought it was a fire drill. He hurried the children to get in line and rushed them outside in the snow!

Lillianna was only wearing her short sleeve shirt since she had taken her sweater off and wasn't given any time to run across the room for her sweater. As she stood outside, the snow fell on her bare arms and shivering body.She had her sneakers on for gym and not her boots which she wore to school because of all the snow,so the bottom of her jeans got wet. After a few minutes,when no other class went outside,Mr.Smith must have realized something wasn't right. The class went back inside. Lillianna's teacher came to pick the kids up and told him that it was just a testing of the alarms and not a fire drill.

When I picked Lillianna up at 2:30pm she was still cold and couldn't seem to warm up.
I was absolutely livid when I heard this story. I understand Mr.Smith made a mistake because he couldn't hear the announcement but couldn't he see that Lillianna was not dressed for the snow? Does anyone use good judgement in that school? I have had a bad feeling about this place since Lillianna came home her first week of school this year with this ridiculous note to sign. I think common sense is lost in this school.

How would you feel if this happened to your child?

Don't blame me!

Rich called me at work on Sunday to ask where I put the laundry card. In our apartment complex we have cards to run the washer and dryer. I had just put $15 on our card so I was aggravated when Rich asked this question especially since I was having a very stressful day. My fingers were so swollen I had to remove my rings. I was convinced my blood pressure was up and I was scared. Going to the ER at work would've meant losing a day's pay and sitting in the ER for hours. I didn't want to do that. I tried to put it out of my mind but thinking that I could have a stroke at any minute was rather nerve racking..

So there I was,all stressed and frazzled and Rich was freaking out about the laundry card and saying that I was the last to use it. Just what I needed! Now we've lost $15 and we still have a huge pile of dirty laundry. I could only to talk to him for 2 seconds because my head was splitting and we said good-bye.

When I came home at 4:45pm Rich met me downstairs to carry up the groceries. Sheepishly he said,"Uhm,I found the laundry card." I asked him where he had found it. "Let's just say I found it and leave it at that." Hell no!!! I wanted to know more and I told him he had to tell me. "Well..... it was in the shirt pocket of the shirt I was wearing," he looked down at his feet and said,"Sorry,honey." I burst out laughing.
I just knew it wasn't my fault!!!!!

Do you apologize after you have wrongly accused your spouse?

Our first taco night

Tonight is going to be our very first taco night. Why have we waited so long? Well,Lillianna doesn't eat meat and Rich doesn't eat anything spicey so I have never suggested it. What would be the point?

The other night Rich told me a story about Lillianna and a friend who were talking about tacos and Lillianna declared that if she were to actually eat a taco it would contain lettuce,cheese and shredded carrots.I thought,"Hmmmm....I could do that! Too bad Rich wouldn't eat it." Rich said he would eat tacos if I didn't add the spicey flavor. I was overjoyed!!

I will make Lillianna her veggie taco,Rich can have his taco without seasoning and I will get a yummy taco with everything.
We'll all get what we want.

How do you like your tacos?

A WHAT is in your eye?

Ok people,I am getting sick of this! Let's define a couple of things here.

Pigsty:
n. pl. pig sties
1.A shelter where pigs are kept.
2. Slang. A dirty or very untidy place.

Stye:
Main Entry: sty
Variant: or stye
Function: noun
Inflected Form: plural sties or styes
: an inflamed swelling of a sebaceous gland at the margin of an eyelid called also hordeolum


I want to make sure everyone knows the difference between the two words. Pigsty is a home for pigs and a stye is a swollen gland on the eyelid. They are clearly two very different things. So unless you happen to have pigs running around your eyelid,please do not call your eye doctor and
complain of having a pigsty in your eye. Because if you do have a pigsty in your eye,you have some serious problems!!

Do you know the difference between a pigsty and a stye?

Police car panic!

As I was driving to work at 7:15am this morning,I noticed a police car driving behind me. He didn't have his lights on and I couldn't imagine that he was going to pull me over for anything because I wasn't doing anything wrong. However, I still sat up straighter(no slouching!),checked my speed (of course I was going the speed limit!!),checked my inspection sticker(I just got it in November)and held my breath.
Two seconds later he turned down a side street.

Now why does that make me nervous every single time?
Realistically I know that the police have to drive their cars on public roads so chances are I will be seeing them on a regular basis. It's just when they are right behind me that I feel all worried and frazzled.

Does this ever happen to you?

Crazy phone calls

One day,several years ago,I had a dilemma at work.I decided to call Rich at his work to solve my problem.This was back in the day when he had a cell phone but only turned it on as he was driving home from work. Of course now we both have phones and if I need to talk to him I just call his cell. Back then I had to actually go through the main number,be transfered to his department and then someone had to find him to take my call. I rarely called Rich at work so he was quite anxious as he answered the phone huffing and puffing.

Rich:(breathless) Hello?
Me:(cheerfully) Hi,honey!
Rich:(hesitantly)What's wrong?
Me: What was the name of the fort on F-Troop?
Rich: Fort Courage.
Me:(excited!!) Oh ya....Fort Courage. Thanks!
Rich:(clearly confused) That's what you called me for?
Me: Uhm....ya.We were talking at work and none of us could think of the name of that fort.I knew you would know so I decided to call you.Thanks for your help.Love you!!
Rich:Uhm...Ok....love you.

Since that call,Rich has teased me about it many times.It hasn't stopped me from calling him with crazy trivia questions,though,over the years.
The other day Rich called me at home.I had already spoken to him earlier so this call made me nervous.

Rich:(chewing)So,I'm eating lunch....
Me:(interrupting) What's wrong??
Rich:So,I'm eating lunch.....
(I decided to sit down while I listened so that I could brace myself for whatever he was going to tell me.)
Me:(trying to hurry him up so I could hear the news quickly) What happened?
Rich:(still chewing) So I am eating low-carb pita right?
Me:(wondering what the heck that had to do with anything)Yes,it's low-carb.
Rich:How many grams of carbs are in this?
Me:(still not understanding where this conversation is going) 10 grams.
Rich:Cuz Kevin has low-carb pita that only has 5 grams.
Me:(finally realizing his emergency was just like my F-Troop emergency.) You called me about the pita???
Rich:Well,ya!!

Do you and your spouse call each other for funny questions like this??

Keeping my daughter safe

Do you talk to your children about sexual predators and how to keep themselves safe?
You can read today's post at DotMoms.