The perfect ponytail

How to give small town directions

The idea for this blog came to me last night after speaking with my father. My family is working out the finer details for the family reunion this year and a location had been decided on. During the conversation my father decided to give me directions to the new location and his directions were exactly how anyone who grew up in small town would give them.

If you want to crash our family reunion, here are the directions he gave me. Go on the road headed towards the castle, keep on that road until you get to where I showed you Aunt Jenny's old house. Now there is not much left to that house, but by where her house used to be, turn on that road and just go a little bit further.

When I was growing up we gave directions by town landmarks, even if the landmark was no longer there. If you were not from the town we were not much help because well you should know where cemetery hill was.

These are the landmarks I would still use if I had to give directions in my home town today and I bet few of them are still around.

Big Star, Cemetery Hill, Dairy Queen, the Walker's house (now this is the loop), city pool and the park.

Letter of Intent

I have finally finished the Letter of Intent regarding Maddy. It was hard to write and took me several months. For those of you who are new to my blog here is the original post I wrote regarding the Letter of Intent.

The short version of the story is that once the hubby and I are gone, someone will need a guideline to help Maddy and the more information they have the easier the transition will be for everyone. We know that Maddy can never live on her own, she will always need a support system in place. It is very difficult to sit down and write honestly about things that your child lacks.

I am now in the process of reviewing and updating the document. It will always be a work in progress and I will have to update it once or twice a year. I now need for people who know Maddy to read the document and provide me with additional input. The more information we have the better.

If you are a close friend or family just e-mail me or send an e-mail via Face book and I will get a copy to you. If you are a blogger friend and are interested in reading the document you can contact me as well. I will need to do some editing to protect privacy of people named in the document.

Thanks in advance to anyone/everyone who gives me feedback!!!

Time

Time means something different for everyone, but there are two basic camps when it comes to time.

The first camp thinks time is like a big project for school or work. You want it correct, punctual and early seems like a bonus. People who are in this camp can vary how important it is to be punctual. I was a more moderate person in this camp. I preferred the 5-10 minutes early. People used to joke that if I arrived exactly on time I was 10 minutes late. My grandfather however was a bit of an extremist in the punctual camp. We all decided as a family that everyone needed to tell him that things started an hour later than they really did. He was a show up a couple of hours early kinda guy.


The second camp when it comes to time are the people who see time as a suggestion or guideline. These are the people who will show up but you just never know when. They don't rush in with reason for the tardiness, they just stroll in and seem pleased that they made it to the location within what they consider a reasonable time frame.


My life has recently forced me out of the punctual camp and on the fringes of the tardy folks. When my Mom called recently to make sure I was alright because I was not at the restaurant on time I had to assure her all was fine. That is when I realized that because of Maddy time has become a guideline not a deadline for me.


While pondering this I realized what Salvador Dali was portraying in this picture.


He obviously had a good friend that had a teenage girl. I don't think the girl would even have to be special needs. The picture depicts when parents, as well as time, finally gave up the fight, wilted and surrendered to the girl. I am not sure if it depicts defeat or survival by surrendering their timeframe to teen girl time. However, I am pretty sure it is a statement of survival!

Woo Hoo!! I am finally overweight!!

Wait..what???

For those of you that have a Wii Fit will know what I am talking about. I have been hovering the line between obese and overweight BMI for about two weeks now. Yesterday I finally dropped down to the overweight section and hopefully have said good bye to the land of obese.

The Wii Fit is a funny little thing and I know several people who got their feelings hurt by it and refuse to exercise with it. I happen to enjoy the Wii Fit and ignore the snide comments it will sometimes make. I know I am out of shape, so I look at as a challenge, and this frame of mind is working for me.

I have a long way to go to healthy weight according to the Wii, but when I get there, I will post a picture of my poor fat avatar and then my nice skinny one.

For now I will keep at it and might be ready for a bathing suit this summer!!

Where do I sign up?

Dear Diary

When I was a young teen like most girls I attempted to keep a diary. I was not very good at it. Many pages were left blank because I did not have anything to write about. When I went back to read it as an adult I found many pages that started with "Dear Diary sorry it has been so long since I have written". The other pages were usually filled with silly things like the current boy that I thought was either foxy or groovy.

This month I have felt very much like my blog has gotten the Dear Diary treatment. There have been a lot more pictures than words this month. I have things to write about, but the few times I have had a chance to write the passion was missing. This month I have been so busy with friends, family commitments and having people over to the house I have not had much time to spend on the blog.

I will try to do better about making time, but know I love to write this blog and love reading the comments from readers as well. Soon I hope to get back to my regular schedule and know that I am a bit envious of the bloggers that can manage life and blogging in a consistent manner!

One less lonely girl

The newest teeny bopper singing sensation is Justin Bieber and one of his songs is One less lonely girl.


This and other Justin Bieber songs have let to a tragic situation. Parents all over the country have finally reached the breaking point when they hear these songs on repeat for 5000 times.

It seems that the courts have actually ruled this as justifiable homicide.


It is my fear that Maddy may only have one week live...

If I-Hop served martinis

I would have been drunk by 10:30 am.





That is how my day has gone....

My favorite t-shirts I own

Would you save a life if you could?

The hubby a friend and I were watching an episode of Nip/Tuck the other night. We are watching all the seasons on DVD so this is not the current season. In the episode one of the characters needed a kidney. The question came up would you donate your kidney to someone? Both the boys kinda hesitated and had certain scenarios in which they would. I just said yes I would no problem.

This conversation got me thinking. Would I really give a kidney that I might need later to someone I don't know? I would like to think so, but that is a scary step to take. Would I give a kidney to someone I know, heck ya. Why the difference in hesitation? Is it because I have a connection to that person? Is is because I want to know how my internal organ is being treated? Is it the fear of the procedure or that I don't have the option to say in a few years just kidding I want it back?

A few days after that episode I saw on a local TV show about two people who are survivors because of bone marrow donations. The procedure to donate is fairly non invasive and the need is huge for bone marrow donors. To be placed on the registry is very easy as well. You go to the website, request a kit, give a donation if you want and then you cotton swab your cheeks and send it back to them postage paid.

I can be on the list until I am 60 so that gives me a good number of years to try to save someone's life. I encourage everyone to take the step I did and check out Be the Match.

Bejewled is evil and other observations

I have hardly been home these past two weeks so I have not had time to think of a blog post or make the time to write one. I do have a few things in mind and hope to get to them soon. Until then here are a few observations I have made over the past couple of weeks.

1. Bejeweled is evil. I have just started playing this silly game and it has killed my productivity. I walk by the computer and think one game what will it hurt. However it seems I need to play one game every freaking time I walk by my computer.

2. Greed is bad in any form. Greed over money, time, friendships or feelings all lead to no good. Giving is so much better.

3. I am the worst mom in the whole wide world and web. We are still having text issues so now every night at 9:00 I ruin her life and take her phone away.

4. I am the best, coolest , most awesome mom ever! It looks like I have secured tickets for her to see Justin Bieber at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

5. Hoping for an actual Spring this year and hope we don't just jump into summer.

6. Still exercising twice a day and loving it. So far I am a pound ahead of my goal.

7. The pile by my desk just keeps getting bigger and bigger. If Bejeweled will let me I plan to work on that later today.

8. Through Facebook I have reconnected with a lot of friends I had lost touch with. Last night one of my best friends in high school found me. I want to know everything that has happened in his life since I saw him last. How can you possibly catch up on everything that has happened in 25 years?

How we spent Saturday

I wish!!

Yesterday when we were out and about running errands I had to get cash. When Maddy and I run errands she will typically sit in the front seat with her Ipod and try to forget that her embarrassing mother is with her.

I pulled up the to ATM machine, put in my card, punched in all the information. Just before the money appeared Maddy happened to look over at me. When the money showed up she exclaimed "Hey look free money!!".

Too much of a good thing?

One of the goals we have for Maddy is that she is as social as possible. She needs to have appropriate peers and we are lucky to have found that. She does have a groups of friends in a few areas of her life now.

Another goal we have for her is to be comfortable with technology. She is incredibly well versed and comfortable with all types of technology. This can be both a blessing and a costly curse. In this house we do not do bargain basement technology. When it comes to electronics we must have the biggest, best and brightest on the market.

We also try to teach her the concept of money, time and responsibility. This is an ongoing task with many lesson to learn. Heck I know some adults who need lessons in this still.

For a while Maddy had an Iphone. It was neat and cool, but we had a lot of problems with it because she wanted to use it more like an Ipod than an actual phone. We finally got her an Ipod Touch and a regular cellphone and that has worked out much better.

With the introduction of friends the desire to text has taken over. The hubby and I understand that this is the main medium that teenagers use to communicate so we encouraged it. Maddy has a few friends that she texts with on a regular basis. She also now has my mother texting her.

Now that we have a boy in Maddy's life the texting has increased a good bit. I do my best to monitor her while giving her privacy. She knows that we have the right to review her texts at any time and that she should never text anything she does not want us to read. I placed a no phone after 9:00 in the evening policy and when I feel she is not adhering to it, I take her phone to bed with me in the evenings.

I knew that she was going a bit crazy on the texting and was setting limits when/where I could. I also explained to her that if she went over the limit too much she would have to explain to her father what happened.

This month our phone bill was an extra 300 dollars because she went over her text limit by 3202 texts. I know that a good bit of them where the one letter/word answers the kids do, but really how can you text that much?!

Since we want her to text, we have upped the plan, but we are watching the phone a bit more and setting a few more limits. I think that each month I will sit with her and the phone bill and go over how she is spending her text time.

Hopefully it will work and lessons will be learned.

School Work