quiet in the house

at least for a little while. everyone is still in bed. this is another thing i miss about being home. quiet time in the house. when i was home alone i never turned on the tv (except that one time i watched precious because i knew nobody else here would want to or should watch it).

last weekend we went to a karate camp for the boy in another city, about an hour and a half away. before going back to work it was just going to be the guys going, so we wouldn't have the expense of boarding the dogs. but, since i went back to work and got my first paycheck last week, we all went.

i have never thought of myself as a hotel/restaurant snob...but i think as i get older and wiser about how i spend my money, i expect certain things for a certain amount of money. we stayed at an embassy suites. the hubs and i had stayed at one once before, for one night for a wedding party. you don't get a feel for a hotel after one night, especially when you are partying. based on this weekend, i'd never stay at another embassy suites. the room is clean and nice enough, comfy bed. but...the lounge/bar/bistro food sucks. they do not have free wi-fi, and really, i'm not paying $10 a day for wi-fi. they did have a nice complementary breakfast, but it seemed like afterwards, their floor was sticky all damn day. only two elevators and one or the other was broken the whole time. it was an inconvenient hotel...as far as getting in and out w/ your luggage or parking etc. blah. but, the weekend itself was good. the boy enjoyed all karate all the time (although his instructor is really bad at organizing stuff like this and we probably won't do it again). the girl and i went shopping and she fell in love with the container store. it was good to get away for the weekend.

THIS weekend, i lucked out. my friend texas was to have a work meeting this coming week and it was up in the air about where it would be. in the city we just spent the weekend in or another further north. chaching...it's in the city near me! sooo.....she is flying here tomorrow and the hubs is driving her to her meeting city on monday (on his way to an out of town work trip). twice in one year i get to see her! how amazing is that?

my mom came to the boy's graduation tuesday and wednesday they left to go back to wv, taking two of my sister's kids. my parents are not on a schedule....they could have spent the rest of this week here...maybe doing something with their other four grandkids since school is out. maybe waiting until after my niece puddin' had oral surgery on friday. nope...they hit the road. my sister's kids will be up there with them until after july 4th. they will celebrate my oldest niece's bday there (my sister may or may not go up for it). my mom and sister apparently do not think there is any reason we can't or shouldn't go to an out-of-town birthday (5 hrs away). i'm sure she wouldn't see it this way, but to me it is glaringly obvious that my mom will no make an effort to be a grandma HERE, but she will fall all over herself to do it in wv where she has the audience of her sisters.

honestly i don't even get mad or care anymore...but it just confounds me. i will never understand what makes her do the things she does.

i survived

tuesday was a big milestone for us. the boy graduated fifth grade and the girl 8th grade. we are saying goodbye to elementary school. it makes me sad. there are teachers i will miss and i realize that everything will start moving at warp speed now and i will blink my eye and four years will be gone and the girl will be off to college and the boy will be finishing high school.

monday night i was a nervous wreck. i was testy and snapping at the kids. it wasn't pretty at all. i apologized later, i knew it was nerves. the girl's mood wasn't much better; she was afraid she wouldn't get any awards. she did of course. the boy took everything in stride like he always does.

i wish i wasn't that mom that got so emotional at these types of things. i wish i was the mom who could just enjoy the moment and be happy. i do enjoy the moment and my heart soars with pride over my kids....but there's the other part that bawls like a baby because they are growing up so fast and each milestone like this takes them further away from me. yeah, i know...i'm a nut.

the hubs took off the rest of the week to hang out with the kids and next week they'll go to summer camp.

the new job is going well, though i don't know that i have quite the same enthusiasm i did those first couple of weeks. i am perplexed as to what it is i am to do day to day. my boss has given me pieces and parts of what my job entails, and people tell me to enjoy it right now because i will be swamped...but i just don't see how. i didn't have the benefit of my predecessor still being here when i got here to show me the ropes. this is a company that loves to have meetings and i suppose outlook calendar will become my best friend. i knew i would have a learning curve about the product, but didn't expect not to fully understand my role. i think i need to have a talk w/ my boss.

despite the fact that the company is huge, my department is small, 13 people. so far most of them seem really nice and they all seem to work well together, although there are obviously people who are better friends than others. there are 8 women and 5 men. the women seem to have paired off as far as who they eat lunch w/ etc. while the guys are usually the ones who ask everyone to lunch. strange dynamic. but...outside of our department i think the company is predominantly male. when my boss and i go to meetings outside of our department we are generally the only women there. this is such a different environment for me.

unconventional

how about some eye candy? ok ok, in the truest sense of the word i suppose the following will not make the list of the top hawties or sexiest men, but i find them yummy. hmmm...i wonder what this says about me that i find these people attractive? LOL who's your unconventional crush?

vincent d'onofrio. mystic pizza. MIB. and of course svu. i think i actually fell for him because of svu. the way his character's brain works blows my mind. even all grizzly like this i think he's attractive.

ah..jean luc picard...i mean patrick stewart. he's a slight man, but the accent, the commanding, the bald head. nice. make it so indeed. (and for the record is is a kabillion times better than kirk.)

ah jack. he's teddy-bear cute. and we share a birthday. and he's funny as hell. and seems to be good with kids (hell, he's always hosting something on nickelodeon).

sofia vergara. modern family is one of my fave shows; i love all of the characters. but frankly, if i swung this way...omg. she is my girl crush. i wish i had her body.

frederick weller. marshall marshall...in plain sight. again, i love the way his character's brain works. he's geeky but smart and funny. that equals attractive.


oddly enough the one with the best body is the one i'm most embarrassed about. john cena. yes...of the wrestling ring. my son watches wrestling. it's worse than reality tv in my book. BUT...oh.my.lord. this boy has an amazing body. do you SEE those abs?

good weekend

flowers are starting to bloom, well, have been in bloom, but this hollyhock finally started to bloom this weekend. i planted it a couple of years ago and this is the first summer it's bloomed. so excited. makes me want to plant more. they are soooo tall, 3-5 feet! we also made s'mores in the backyard this weekend, always yummy. saw the new pirate movie starring my boyfriend johnny (also yummy) and basically had a great weekend.

it is sunday night and i'm not dreading going to work in the morning. that's a good thing. i wonder if/when that will go away. before i got laid off i liked certain parts of the job i did, not the office politics or the bosses or the travel, but the actual day to day i mostly liked. although, admittedly i had been doing the same thing (although not always for the same magazine) for about 10 yrs and i was a bit bored with it. i think it will take me awhile to get bored at this new job.

growing pains

we've been going through growing pains this year with the girl. she is ready to start spreading her wings and we (meaning me more so than the hubs) are not quite ready to let her. while the hubs isn't ready to push her out of the nest, he is more realistic, knowing that we can't keep her with us forever.

i think we've been pretty fair--we let her go to a boy/girl party; she went to the folly one night w/ just her friends (no adults); we've dropped her off at the movies, etc.

last night was the 8th grade semi-formal dance. months ago she talked about going, with her friends, and was excited to pick out a dress. weeks ago her group decided not go to to the dance, rather they'd go to the movies or someones house. they poo pooed the dance, it would be lame, nobody was going, etc. yeah middle school, god i'm glad i'm not in middle school.

i've been asking the girl for days what the plan was---movies? going to someones house? etc. she said she and another friend were going to a friend's house and the movies. THURSDAY--you know the day before friday--she presents this plan: a friend's mom (whom i know well and like) would pick her up around 3pm and take them to another friend's house (while her mom was still at work and an older brother or sister may or may not be present). that parent would come home at 5 and be there until the evening ended at 9pm.

i have never met this parent and my kid had never been to this person's house. i was opposed to her going there before the mom got home from work (plus this would leave our boy home alone for a couple of hours). we vetoed the idea but said we'd take her over when we (and the girl's mom) got home from work. she pouted and of course hated this idea.

the hubs got home before i did and took the girl to her friend's house. i went to pick her up at 9pm. a tall, teen aged boy answered the door (apparently the older brother). the mom was not there. at 9pm. i collected my kid and started backing out of the driveway. just then the mom pulls in behind me, and then drives through the grass around my car to park in her driveway. never says boo to me.

so....apparently the mom was there when the hubs took the girl over. the older brother was mostly at his girlfriend's house, though my girl is not really sure how much of the evening he was home. after the mother fixed the girls dinner...she LEFT with a friend. LEFT them alone until 9pm. i told the girl this particular friend is welcome to come to our house (and she has) but that i seriously doubted i'd be letting her go to that friend's house again due to the lack of parental supervision.

my kid of course thinks this means i don't trust her or that i think she and her friends are going to do something bad. i have told her a million and 12 times that it is not that i don't trust her or her friends, and that 9 times out of 10 nothing would happen and all would be well....but accidents are called accidents for a reason....that one time someone could get hurt or something could go wrong and no adult would be there. and frankly, i do worry about kids whose parents are so casual (at least in my mind) about their care.

people say we're over protective...and maybe we are. what do you think?