what is it?

If you follow me on twitter, you may have noticed that all my familia (small though it may be) was in town for a long weekend of birthday extravaganza-ing.  It was a good excuse; a few birthdays, some babysitting needs I had, extra airline credit to use up.... all converged for a convergence of my family in our town.  It was wonderful.

The not-so-wonderful thing was that my mom's husband was there.  The wonderful thing is, he's a wonderful guy.  Are you confused yet?  There's nothing wrong with him, really.  In fact he is amazing.  But he's my mom's husband.  Not my dad.  My dad, who has never met my husband or my three children and knows nothing of my current life.  If you've been reading for a while, you may remember that I memorialized the 13th anniversary of my dad's death this year. He died of a brain tumor.

My dad's five brothers, bless their hearts, were terrified about dying themselves from a brain tumor.  I don't know if their concern over their own mortality led them to be really crappy during that time in our lives or they are just generally crappy people.  Since they are related to my great dad, I'm going to go with the former.  Anyway.  So all that was a long time ago.  Now, one of my uncles has basically ruined his life and has been in the hospital for a few months.  He's behaved in such a way as to throw his life away, when my dad more than likely would have given anything to keep his.  It's so complicated ~ isn't it always? ~ but it makes me so sad.

This weekend, my grandma facebook messaged me.  Yes, my 70-something-years-old grandma!  She wanted to tell me "before it gets all over facebook" that another one of my uncles has cancer.  It's so odd.  It may not be a brain tumor, but it's definitely another way to face your own mortality.  I'm aching for my aunt and my cousins.  I'm aching for my grandma, who has already lost a husband and son, and is facing the distinct possibility of losing two more. 

Then I get frustrated.  I'm of the camp that 'if it's your time to go, it's your time' and it may be from cancer, gangrene, a car crash or a 15-pound hail ball, but....you're gonna go.  Death is inevitable!  It's just that these illnesses force us to stare death in the face, while we might normally do a very good job of relegating it to a small corner behind us.  It's another good reminder, even for me who really isn't skittish about death, to get my house in order.  How about you?  Are you 'ready'?

Life in Lists

School has started, as well as our extracurricular activities which start up this week.  I'm a list maker.  I strongly believe that if I make a list I am excused from recalling any of it, since I've written it down and freed my brain for other things.  Sooooo.... since I'm in "list mode" y'all get a life list from me instead of  a nice, newsy, scintillating blog post.  :)

School started
I can't keep up
My baby has non-mom anxiety

Ok, that's not a very interesting list, but my head is a little cloudy at the moment.  With the end of our month-long vacation as well as the end of summer, life is off and running at the speed of light.  Husband has lots of overtime scheduled for the next few months, and of course we are happy about that since he takes it as comp time but it won't be for a while yet that he'll be able to use any of it.  Sigh.

I'm also secretly plotting to get him to change his work schedule next year so that I can take EMT classes.  I'm sure that will really help with #2 up there, "I can't keep up."

Not!!

Disheartened

I was at our favorite local grocery store recently, and one of the employees there looked REALLY familiar to me.  I tried to figure out if I knew her and eventually we just laughed and she told me that she had recently moved from another state.  It's a state, in fact, that we have been thinking of moving to, so I said that and then she gasped.

"Don't move there!  Do not.  With those beautiful children, stay far, far away."

What!??!  I had no idea what she was talking about, especially when she mentioned my kids.  Well, come to find out, she felt like the town has a great reputation for openness and progressiveness, however, she found it to be very racist and antagonistic.  She said "I'm from New York.  I can take it like the best of them! But I was depressed the ENTIRE TIME I lived there.  There's no sun.  There's no open-mindedness.  I was miserable.  MISERABLE.  I moved here and I'm so happy.  I've never been happier.  No problems.  It was that horrible city that made me like that."

Hmm... well that's certainly NOT a resounding endorsement of that area.  Made me sad.  And a little happy, since I don't want to move anyway.  :)  ha!

Not sure about this one...

Ok.... I just have to say, as I'm looking around for 'human anatomy puzzles' on Amazon this one caught my eye.  Yes, it's just the human head and it's a little pricey (these are toys I'm buying!) but definitely interesting. I'm shopping for birthday presents for Austin and Charlotte!!

I think it's especially interesting that they have an advertisement for a water gun combo on the same page for $7.50.  What immediately came to mind was, "Ok, so you want me to buy the model and then use my water gun with it for target practice?"

Probably not something the general public would think, eh? 

Yeah, I thought not.

killed

Recently we were in the middle of a long car ride when we had an impromptu gun safety class with our three kids, initiated by our almost-four-year-old.  She started us off by saying,

"Daddy, if you are working on your shooting thing and then you are trying to fix it do you think it can go shooting and get you killed?"

So we talked for a while about what those shooting things are (guns!), how they are not just for "fun" (at least not yet), and I veered my dear husband away from talking about shooting people for fun (a la bb guns and paint balling) so as not to confuse the dear children.

They know they are never allowed to touch -- without permission -- what they may see around (which isn't so much any more, if you were reading my blog about a year ago you know it was gun crazy at our house); we talked about how some kids don't follow the no-touching rule and they have either killed other people or killed themselves even on accident.  It was a really great conversation; of course, at least we thought it was.  And it ended nicely on this note, as again, something only an almost-four-year-old could say:

"Daddy, when you were little did you get killed once?"

 Maybe the conversation didn't go quite as well as we thought.  Oh well.  It's a process.

It's Complicated...

Hey there...

I bet you thought I dropped off the face of the earth, huh?  :)  Well, it's complicated.  Husband is on vacation for quite some time.  However, due to my responsibilities in my corner of the world I'm really not able to go anywhere out of town.  I'm chained.  Husband refuses to go anywhere by himself or, gasp, with a kid or two in tow, so we are all stuck here at each others' throats in this teeny tiny apartment.

To make matters worse, DH is stuck on his regular work-a-day schedule so when he gets up in the afternoon and is "ready to go" I am on the downhill slide, careening towards bedtime with very little energy to get up and go be the cruise director for fun and games.  He has to pick up the slack, but of course, he's on vacation so he's not having any of that!

So I have no interesting stories to relate, nothing to share about how much the police life bites or rocks, just... my little corner of the world, slowly slipping out of summer and into fall.  How are you spending your August?

Oatmeal Zucchini Pancakes

I can't believe I forgot to tell you ~ I shared my very favorite pancake recipe on The Storylady Cooking Blog recently!  I made them again today, but with the addition of 1 cup of grated zucchini and a healthy dose of cinnamon and nutmeg.  The kids loved them, just as much as they love the 'regular' oatmeal pancakes.  I'll have to remember this for St. Patrick's Day, although it is completely NOT zucchini season in March.  :)

Yum-o!