A Little Spring

It must be on its way because everything is rainy and thawing and I won't complain. I really won't. Despite the mud and gloomy skies, its above freezing. Plus, I let the kids put out some Easter decorations today and the crocus are peeking through. This does good things for my soul. I'm ready to see all this brown turn green, to go outside and not freeze my butt off. (Which requires at least 55 degrees Fahrenheit please and thank you.) Also, its the every other Saturday which means that its Avon delivery day and I love that day because, yes, I am a nerd like that. I  get my restock of what I use and try a new lip gloss shade for fun... and I get the preview fliers which are the BEST because its like I have this big secret that I get to share with everyone in a few weeks. Anyways, my dorky self is going to give out some clues as to whats coming and whats hot this spring and summer you y'all can be on the cutting edge of things.

1. Lime. Lime with other scents. Trust me, its a lot of citrus and lime and deliciously fresh and refreshing smells.
2. An exceptionally cute little piece of head wear made popular in the 20s and recently seen on celebrities such as Katie Holmes, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Reese Witherspoon.... The list goes on and on.
3. Think pearly pinks and vibrant violets for your face.
4. Super cute nude heels to show off that pop of orange or turquoise. I like it!
And, of course, old favorites that we all depend on with some twists and new ideas like music and lighting. Think about that one for awhile ;)


Just click the catalog you want to browse and shop till your little ♥s content. Sadly, I can only take US orders, but if you're North of the Border (read Canada) you can contact me and I have a super amazing rep. for you to deal with who JUST launched her business about three days ago. If you're off the tweeting world, you can @reply @MaryannClayton. She'll take good care of you.

And since I started this blog, it started snowing.... time for me to stop jinxing the weather and scram. Have a Super Shopping Saturday.

Just Breathe

Its been a crazy, crazy week. I'm going to give you the sweetened condensed version since the hour by hour is weird at best. Lets rewind to last week at this time shall we?

Last Friday: Mr. 4 is ornery. Very, very ornery and whiney. This is not strange as he is a four year old boy.

Last Saturday morning: Huh. He has a fever, but its pretty low. 100 barely counts to me, but DAMN the whining and crying has escalated into full scare GRAWR! This will not do. He obviously doesn't feel well, so I am nice. Sort of.

Last Sunday: Still a low grade fever and a little bit of a drippy nose. Poor baby is getting a cold, but he's up and around for the most part and not being too terrible. We went to dinner at my parents and he stayed home waiting for his taco. He got a cheeseburger and was happy.

Last Monday which was only 5 days ago: Fever is gone. Snot is dripping a little more and now we have a cough. But, Mr. 4 is peppy and wants to go outside and play. He plays, has fun and comes inside for frequent snacks and to remind me that he hates snow. Me too Gav, me too.

Tuesday: Pack up Mr. Grumpy Gav for preschool in all of his coughing glory, only to call his teacher, who happens to be one of my best friends and tell her, "I think I'm just going to keep him home. He's coughing a lot and grumpy." We ran errands to the bank and somewhere else until he coughed until he threw up his chocolate milk in the van. Niiiice. OK. Glad he wasn't at school. We went home, hung out and had a normal, all-be-it snotty day. I decided with all the cough, cough, coughing it was time to get some breathing treatments going. Nothing out of the normal for Gav with a cold.

Wednesday: Damn. That's a lot of coughing and why is he so tired? Quick trip to the pediatrician because he's obviously feeling like hell today if he can fall asleep on my lap while I type. Diagnosis; double ear infection and pneumonia. Rx; Zithromax, breathing treatments and fluids. Piece of cake, except he slept through the entire grocery store while Miss 2 jumped on his legs in the cart. He didn't eat his Starbucks cookie, which seemed almost like certain death to me. He slept the whole 30 minute trip home. He slept through lunch. He slept through his nap. He slept until dinner. He slept through dinner and couldn't breathe for anything even after an extra dose of breathing meds. Off to the ER we go where he is finally awake but obviously retracting while he breathes. So, after a chest x-ray and a flu swab, we now have double ear infection, pneumonia, and the flue. F...M....L.... and they want to send him home. No! No, no, and NO! I am not taking Respiratory Boy with that much distress home for round the clock treatments! So, I cried and refused, and the ER doc agreed (probably because I scared him) and he was admitted to the Peds unit back over by the aforementioned Starbucks.

I'm not sure I can properly put into words just exactly how tired and out of it Gav was on the 25 minute ride from one hospital to the other. Lets just say I though he was passing out, or slowly dieing on me. It was THAT scary. His oxygen levels were low at best, and he couldn't stay awake. He hadn't eaten or had much of anything to drink all day, and I just wanted him there and plugged into a wall or something. STAT! So, the super amazing awesome nurses and respiratory therapists took excellent care of Mr.4 and did the round the clock breathers on him, not to mention convincing him to wear the little oxygen thing in his baby nose all night. I didn't sleep, but he had been for almost 24 hours.

Thursday: I see sparkle! His eyes were open and a tiny flicker of ornery was there, but he wasn't about to eat or stay awake all day. Can I just say that anti-biotics and breathing treatments are amazing things? He had to pass the no oxygen test to go home.  After a morning of stuffed puppy dogs and legos from the Grandmas, it was nap time and the oxygen came back which meant I would be sleeping on the tiny little bed chair thingy again. But, another night of having them do the work and watching out for him was soooo worth it. Nighty night time came and guess what, he stayed at 91 or 92 (as opposed to the 82-83 he was at the night before) all night long with no oxygen!

Friday, which is actually today: When he woke up this morning, he was back to the Amazing Spiderman Ninja Machete boy; Rosy cheeks and all. He thinks he's all better and can karate chop his sisters and fly and beat up bad guys and monsters. I still hear the wheeze and see the grouchies come on,  because he's still a little bit sleepier than normal. In an hour he'll have another breathing treatment, but he's conked out on the couch right now and doing a million and one times better than he was 48 hours ago.

Tomorrow: I think thank you notes are in order. Thanks to the nurses at the Parkview North Peds unit, the respiratory therapists (especially Mark who brought the cookies from Makenzie). Thanks to Dr. Amy and Dr. Hurley. Thanks to all of Gav's awesome friends at preschool and Mrs. Webberfanks"! ♥

The big 2-0-0

So, here it is, by 200th post! Where has the time gone? My little bloggy is growing up. *sniff, sniff* And for my 200th post, what do I have to offer you but .... Charlie Sheen on a cake coke.

Oh, wait.... that's not Charlie Sheen, that's Tommy Lee. Lets try again.

Here we go.

 Hmmm.. That's not even fair. He was playing a part in a movie. (Ferris Beuler if you didn't know already.) I'm sure there must be some authentic picture of poor, poor Charlie out there.

There we go. There's the Charlie we all used to know and love. Come on, admit it. You have happy memories of the guy as well as I do. He's Charlie Sheen for cryin' out loud! If we didn't love him, we wouldn't care that we was a stoned out of his mind jack-ass that shouldn't be allowed to marry or do another television interview again! We'd just ignore him, but alas, we aren't, and somewhere deep, deep, deep down inside, we still love him. Its the same with Mel. He was BRAVEHEART and JESUS (OK, not really Jesus, but he played him one time in a movie. You never saw Passion of the Christ? You should have.) My point is that I feel sorry for the guy. The same way I felt sorry for Britt when she shaved her head and ran around commando for all the world to see.

Here, let me help bring some fuzzies to the surface for you. First, go grab a tissue.

     

Feeling better? Having a sudden urge to blast Bon Jovi and pop some popcorn to snuggle up with Jack Bauer, Keifer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen now? See, I told you so.

I just remembered

Twelve years ago I was sitting in an In School Suspension room, filling in as a permanent substitute teacher at Wawasee Middle School. I loved the school. I loved the job, and I loved the days when I got to go down to the Alternative School room and hang out with the "bad kids".  While I was sitting there just hanging out during their study time, I read A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett. I love Jimmy. I love the way he thinks and understands things, his outlook on life, and what you can do with it. While I was reading I came across a poem by Don Blanding that has stuck in my brain ever since. I was mulling over a lengthy phone call with my mom this morning while I was in the shower (which is where I do my best thinking.)  and this poem came back into my head. Its true, I'm a mess. Some days it makes me sad, and scared and crazy, and others it energizes me to know that I'm not willing to just sit back and go with the flow anymore.

It has been said more than once that I'm different than I used to be. I'm choosing to take this as a compliment, although I'm not sure it was intended to be one. I lived so much of my young life afraid to say what I think, or to just spit out how I felt. I'm over it. I'm not out to offend anyone or hurt anyone's feeling, but I'm not willing to just go with the flow anymore. I want to think and wrestle with what I think. I want to make wrong decisions, and live with them so I don't do it again, and I want to enjoy what I've got in front of me, even if it tends to be short-sighted much of the time. Perhaps I need to "Look beyond the end of my nose" or maybe that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm really not sure. All I know is that I don't know anything. I hope I figure it out someday and leave an impression that is worth leaving.

Its frustrating not knowing what you're supposed to be doing, or perhaps not having the resources or drive to focus enough, but I think this poem sums me up as well as anything I could ever put into words.

The Double Life

How very simple life would be
If only there were two of me
A Restless Me to drift and roam
A Quiet Me to stay at home.
A Searching One to find his fill
Of varied skies and newfound thrill
While sane and homely things are done
By the domestic Other One.

And that's just where the trouble lies;
There is a Restless Me that cries
For chancy risks and changing scene,
For arctic blue and tropic green,
For deserts with their mystic spell,
For lusty fun and raising Hell,

But shackled to that Restless Me
My Other Self rebelliously
Resists the frantic urge to move.
It seeks the old familiar groove
That habits make. It finds content
With hearth and home -- dear prisonment,
With candlelight and well-loved books
And treasured loot in dusty nooks,

With puttering and garden things
And dreaming while a cricket sings
And all the while the Restless One
Insists on more exciting fun,
It wants to go with every tide,
No matter where...just for the ride.
Like yowling cats the two selves brawl
Until I have no peace at all.

One eye turns to the forward track,
The other eye looks sadly back.
I'm getting wall-eyed from the strain,
(It's tough to have an idle brain)
But One says "Stay" and One says "Go"
And One says "Yes," and One says "No,"
And One Self wants a home and wife
And One Self craves the drifter's life.

The Restless Fellow always wins
I wish my folks had made me twins.

*Except well, reverse it. The Restless me is loud but sadly, passive. ::headdesk::

You can check out a whole lot more of Don Blanding's work at http://www.don-blanding.com/poetry.htm

I Bristle like a Porcupine

Now, that's my kind of message.

Its Sunday again. I skipped church again. Its more than a bad habit now, its a problem because I just don't want to go. I mean, I DO want to go, or I want to WANT to go, but I don't. I get frustrated and angry and bored and standoffish. Here is a good example.  I was at a local coffee shop last week grabbing a latte while I was out running some errands. While I was waiting, I was listening in on a table of three women. They were nicely dressed, and enjoying some girl time in one of the only places my little hole in the world has to offer. Their conversation wasn't meant to draw attention, or was it, because it surely had mine. The women weren't speaking loudly or saying anything wrong or horrible, but I felt the tension growing as my jaw clamped down just a little tighter. I moved further away so I could get away from their conversation, even though I agreed with what they were saying! 

"I just kept saying, I didn't do anything to deserve God's love. It was by his grace and I'm just so humbled and thankful for that." 

HOW did that make me bristle? How do Facebook status updates and simple conversations make me grit my teeth, even if I agree? What is my problem? Is it that I don't believe what is being said? No! I do! Is it that I don't think people should hear positive and encouraging things? No! I do! I just get this GRAWR thing going on when I hear and see it. It turns me off and I keep thinking it should do the exact opposite. 

So, its Sunday. I missed church, but I haven't missed talking to God, so does that count for something?