Anyone notice....

...how "Thankful Thursday" really doesn't work for me?!?! I haven't posted ONCE on a thursday about my thankfulness. :( boohiss. I'm contemplating changing it to another day which will totally NOT have a nice ring to it or keeping it Thankful Thursday and posting whenever the heck I feel like it so that.... um... so that I can be thankful for the freedom and flexibility I've given myself (which is usually nonexistent). We'll see.

I feel like The Man at DH's dept is really socking it to the pee-ons. I'm not exactly sure how you spell "pee-on" but for today, spelling it this way makes sense. As in, The Man is peeing on all the people below Him, making them pee-ons. Ok, ok, I digress. Who is The Man you ask? I'm not really sure. It seems like it is always someone different. Or it's a conspiracy. Who knows. It's everyone who has drunk the departmental kool-aid and is going with the flow to screw over everyone -- although of course in truth I hear the most about how it's happening to DH and the other officers.

This has been making home life miserable for me. What other things can I complain about? The list is long. I kind of feel like, having read several other police wife blogs lately, that I don't even need to enumerate the ways I could complain because you all already know. :) So instead I will go with my....

THANKFUL THURSDAY topic. I am thankful that:

• My children are now 5, 3, and 4.5 months.
  
• I watched video of my two olders from about 15 months ago. Dallas didn't exist..... Charlotte was wearing diapers, Austin had a squeaky voice (not that it's dropped all that low or anything!), and I was so kind to them. (It must have been that I knew I was being taped for all eternity.) All three of these things seemed so significant!! I almost cried. Life was so different then. No matter how much I hate a lot about my life at this exact moment, looking at that video was precious, precious, precious. It reminded me that we all start out like this and we are ruined in one way or another. NO, I do not think we are innately good. Have a baby who cries for no stinking reason (I have one of those!!) and you will know this is not true. I have not taught either Austin or Charlotte to be selfish, mean, and rude, and yet somehow this comes out of their little selves. Every one of those criminals DH deals with started out like this. Precious, sweet, trusting... and pretty quickly or somewhere along the line or who knows when, something went horribly wrong for them and their lives. Each one of them has a mom, dad, brother, sister, or someone out there that holds some memory of their precious sweetness. I can think of a perfect, publicized example but I can't bring myself to mention it. Anyway! In watching this one, three minute video I am grateful for the reminder of the innocence of my children and the renewed desire to protect that in them and not be the reason for it's demise.
• Bible study has started back up again. We are studying the book of Genesis and right from the beginning I am getting walloped with marriage, the meaning of life, and all sorts of things that I have wanted to go my own way on recently. Thankful for the compass to be renewed and set on course.
• And to finish on a lighter note... I'm thankful that DH's football team won today (but not mine!!)
  

That's all for now. Time for resting my weariness!

Thoughts on jobs

Yes, we're talking about jobs today. You may have noticed I've been posting more sporadically for a while now. Kindergarten is kicking my butt! I crack myself up when I say that, but it's true. We are trying a homeschool approach to K this year since Austin would be a very young Kindergartner... anyway, we have some class days too and between all that and the I-will-sleep-and-eat-when-I-want-to-and-you-won't-make-me-do-it-your-way #3 child, well, Kindergarten along with life in general has been kicking my butt.

So, that has meant a lot more "prepared" foods and more eating out than I would like. I wouldn't mind it if it was healthy and cheap but it seems you can only do either healthy (and expensive) OR cheap (and inexpensive). sigh. It also wouldn't be so bad if my husband's love language wasn't food!! :(

Oh, yes, the husband. The Job has been on my mind lately. There are lots of personnel changes afoot at the dept and unfortunately Hubs has been seeing the true, not flattering side of many of the people he works with/for. It makes me so sad for him ~ it's like a whole other "job" on top of the regular "job" to muck through the politics and give people the opportunity to do the right thing. Of course lately it has seemed that most of the time they choose not to do the right thing and that really makes me sad for the work environment over there!!

Recently I had the opportunity to drive Hubs to work and drop him off. It was a surreal feeling having him get out of the car and say goodbye. I don't know why that is?!?! It felt wrong, almost like a premonition that something was going to go terribly wrong that shift. Of course, one of his superiors royally screwed him over that day so maybe that's what I was foreseeing. NOT! I'm not into all that gobbledy-gook. I think it was just a difference in driving him myself vs. him walking out our front door and driving himself. Weird. Do you ever get a weird "sense" that something wrong is up with your spouse??

Even weirder was the zillion-hour shift he pulled recently. Saying goodbye after lunch and "I'll see you tomorrow" is just bizarre.

Finally, a little poll on your department's "work rules."

• Does your department have rules that require a minimum number of hours off between shifts?
  
• Is there a maximum number of hours allowed to be worked in a 24 period or shift?
  
• Of course, my favorite question: Do the powers that be actually abide by these rules?!?!? :)

Book giveaway...

One thing you may not know about me yet is that I am a book addict. Good thing there's no law against it 'cuz I'd be in the slammer if there were. Husband loves to read too, but not quite a ferociously as I do so I think it gets under his skin a bit too much.

I recently found a blog through a blog through a blog (you know the web is a complete rabbit trail!) and Krista is giving away a copy of Sarah Reinertsen's new book, In a Single Bound: Losing My Leg, Finding Myself, and Training for Life. I entered to win but since I'm such an addict I am blogging about it so I can get a second entry. :D I'm still skeptical about all these blog giveaways. The ONE time I was told I won something... I never got it in the mail!! boo hiss!

Go enter to win it yourself! But hurry, only open until Sunday.

Thankful Thursday (on Friday)

This week I am thankful that...

• husband has a job
• I have a mini vacation at hand
  
• my friend took all three kids to the park so I could tackle my massive to-do list
• we had burgers for dinner and I went "AB" on mine -- "absolutely bare" just like the good old days
• my brother got his cast off (after 10 weeks or some such unthinkable length of time!)
• the weather thinks it's still summer here
• the fan didn't break when I knocked it over -- twice
  

That should be good for now. :) How about you?

Thankful "Thursday"

Many Thankful Thursdays have come and gone since I declared I would start the tradition. No time like the present. The good thing about that declaration is that I've been consciously looking for things I could be thankful for throughout the week. Some of the good stuff in recent memory includes:

• insight/wisdom into my husband's addled brain: after a 48 hour period where he had maybe 5 hours of sleep, we were at the grocery store and he was acting like a zombie. NO JOKE! Instead of getting irritated I realized what was going on and took charge. ah. much better.
• husband cooking lots of good food for some great friends at our place. Fun, yummy times.
• friends who take my kids places and leave me in peace for a bit
• a new school year
• kindergarten!!
• husband *has* a job (no matter how crappy it might seem at times ~ for him AND me!)
• I'm in love with Dallas. He steals my heart every day at some point even when I'm not-so-happy with him.
  

You say it's your Birthday

In lieu of anything else interesting to report, I'm here today to give you a blow-by-blow account of how my recent cupcake making went the way of Murphy's Law.

One of my closest friends had a birthday party recently. Our birthdays are pretty close, so a while back she emailed me to ask if I'd be offended to attend her birthday party on the actual day of my birthday. I'm a LEO wife, right? Of course not! Who has to celebrate their own birthday on their actual birthday?!?!

It was a semi-potluck event ~ guests were to bring sides, appetizers, and desserts. Since it was on my birthday I thought I would go all out and make cupcakes. And not just any old cupcakes, mind you! Chocolate Chai Spice cupcakes. My mom made them for my birthday last year so I knew they are quite tasty.

I started off this project the day before the party. I have three kids, I knew it was going to take me two days to assemble two dozen cupcakes! Did you click on the link for the recipe up there? Did you see how Chai has some "weird" stuff in it, stuff you might typically have laying around? Whole fennel, whole cloves, ground cardamom, ground cinnamon, ground ginger?
Would you believe it, I had every ingredient for this entire recipe (including a Scharffen Berger chocolate bar and Scharffen Berger cocoa powder!) except the whole fennel, a stick of butter, and powdered sugar. So, bright and early on the day I got busy sifting flour, measuring cocoa powder, and then the fun began. Some of the high(low)lights were:

1. Early on in the process we treked up the street to the hole-in-the-wall "medicinal" store to get the whole fennel. Oops, they only take cash for purchases under $7. I dug around for some coins in the stroller and with my three quarters got an ounce of fennel for 70 cents. Ok, maybe this trip won't be so bad after all...
2. We booked it down the street in the 90 degree heat and picked up our butter. Success, albeit a sweaty one.
3. Back home for lunch and naps. In between making everyone else happy, I melted the chocolate, beat the crap out of the batter (as directed!!) and soothed a fussing baby when Austin came to tell me "Mom, I can't do anything else to make Dallas happy!" (Oh I *so* know how you feel son!!)
4. By 2:30 I'd baked a batch of cupcakes and the nightmare was beginning. I guess when you beat the batter for a total of almost 8 minutes with EIGHT eggs... you're bound to get some souffle-like qualities. What I *didn't* like was having the top look like a beautiful souffle and the inside being a regular, dense, yummy cupcake. That meant this huge air pocket at the top into which the crunchy top just crumbled.
5. I decided to peel off/smoosh down (yes, the culinary term is "smoosh") the crunchy meringue parts on top and frost these babies.
6. Austin was soooo excited about frosting the cupcakes. I'd bought some plastic frosting tips earlier in the week and he had been carrying them around, reading the package. "Mom, do you want to use the round tip, the leaf tip, the star tip, or the flower tip?"
7. Of course I was too cheap to buy the fancy frosting bags, so I cut off a corner of a giant ziploc bag and started frosting the cupcakes with that.
8. Things weren't going so well. The frosting wouldn't come out of the tip without a lot of pressure on the bag. Know why?? Two holes had sprouted on the side of the bag and the frosting was gushing out there. uh... yeah.... piles and piles of frosting all over the counter and cupcakes right where I DIDN'T WANT IT!!!!
9. I ditched the bag idea (don't have to tell you how disappointed Austin was!) and started frosting them with my new fancy offset spatula. Dear Lord, come quickly!

Here's the end result. They looked like crap but tasted amazing. It was interesting to hear people's guesses before they ate them: "Ginger? Cocoa? Cinnamon? Peanut Butter?"



Maybe next time I'll go my mom's route and just add the spices to a box of chocolate cake mix!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...

Wow, I just googled "ch-ch-ch-changes" and you would not BELIEVE how many people use that online. Anyway, I was trying to find the lyrics and with all you unoriginal people out there using this for your blog posts it took me a few tries. I wanted to see if the lyrics to the song actually apply to my post, but... well... I was too lazy to read through them all. (You can read them on your own.) So here 'goes.

I've probably mentioned more than once that Hubs works graves, going in to work a little after the kids are in bed and getting home a little after they wake up. (It sure would be nice if he'd get home a little earlier in the morning because I could stay asleep and he could be in charge of morning wake up call! But I digress...) I was recently thinking about how Hubs has only been on days (my dream schedule!) for maybe 12 months of his career. The remainder of his time on has been graves, and mostly by choice. At least I'm pretty sure that's how it's happened. I was just thinking that come the next shift change, I'd be excited to try something new and I was thinking of suggesting the "dreaded swing shift." It starts around 2 or 3 PM at this dept, and Hubs has always said he thinks it's the absolute worst for families. Except for a short stint while on FTO "we've" never been on swings (and you LEO significant others know it's a WE in this!). I'm willing to try anything for a time given enough breathing room and advance notice. Aren't I the gem? So I was somewhat surprised when Hubs called the other night and told me it was his turn for shift sign up. What a ko-ink-y-dink. "Already??" I asked incredulously. So we went around and around for half an hour...not a good idea on my part at midnight, but oh well.

The verdict?

Swings it is.

Give me a few months and I'll either be singing it's praises or begging for mercy and a return to graves. Only time will tell!