Sunday, November 28, 2010

Thanksgiving!

I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time. And it had been about five years since I last cooked a turkey. I'd like to thank all the people who offered up the Reynolds Cooking Bag suggestion (if I had a dollar for every time...) but I decided to to go with my mom's tried and true foil pan meets foil tent covering method. You can't really go wrong following mom's advice on Thanksgiving, right? And that green bean salad showed up long after I left home so I don't have to incorporate that. Okay, I think that was really my sister's contribution, but whatever. So we had Brent's dad and step mom Karen over and Brent's sister and her boyfriend and their little Gabby girl over. The kids loved playing with little Gabby. The girls love babies and toddlers. I happened to watch the Ellen show for about two minutes with Isabella a couple of days before and she was giving away Singamajigs. Cutest, funniest toys I've seen in a long time. Then I ran into them at Walmart the next day for $9 each so I used Gabby as an excuse to buy one. So the kids could play with it with her. Well it's a lot cheaper than having another baby of my own just so I can buy little kid toys again. If you haven't seen these things:



Mine is a little more ghetto looking than these and I think it's probably best to have a chorus of them, but one will have to suffice. Anyway, we all had a good time and the food turned out good I thought. All indications point to no food poisoning. Now I don't want to get rid of the extra table. I kind of like the table for ten sitting in the middle of the living room. But it's going to get pretty tight once the Christmas tree shows up. I think my table setting would have impressed the editors at Country Living magazine (except I had disposable dishes, I should have scoured antique stores for coordinating dishes. But again, whatever.)





The next day  the kids were about to have their sugary cereal that they only get on the weekends for breakfast and I thought, Hmm, pumpkin pie and fruit salad would probably be healthier than that. So...



Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving with family and friends!

Zoe's Eleventh

Yes, Zoe's birthday was a couple of months ago and I never posted anything on it. At least we celebrated it on time, huh? So here's a little now. She's 11 now! And she had a sleepover/late night party with a few of her friends. I'm pretty sure they all had fun and they are all good kids who aren't too crazy so it didn't drive the mom crazy having all those girls sleeping over.

Friday, November 5, 2010

You're All Welcome Here

Euuugh. There's the made up word of the day. That and withdrawling. I just saw someone use that and it struck me as funny. So life sucks right now. I'm not going to sugar coat it. Oh, the expounding I would like to do right now. But sadly my personal issues need to stay tucked in my head, or at least thrown up all over Brent for a while. I need like twelve people in twelve categories to be able to vent to. You go in the category of politics (which would probably be pretty easy because I've been working on my apathy). You, over there, you take religion. You take paranoia and hypochondria. And what do you want? Hormonal induced depression? Or, what am I going to do with my life crisis. Or, what am I doing with my life crisis. And you. You get gluten free bread.

Really it's just one of those funks or fogs or something that will eventually lift and all will be fine-ish again. There was a glimmer of the fog lifting yesterday. There was also this good line in a song I was listening to: "Some guy on the net thinks I suck and he should know, he's got his own blog." Funny. And I almost feel a little better now. Plus Monday I'm going to start working on Project: Holy Crap I'm Going To Be 40 In About Six Months So I've Got To Get It Together in A Good Way Before Then. Yeah, I'll probably go down that sad little path a little.

I truly believe that being happy all the time is overrated. No, you don't want to walk around all the time like you can't get over the disappointment you met in your teenage years but I think it's good to embrace life and all the emotions it brings. With the caveat that you are still a functional human being and able to get done the necessities and not beat your kids or bug the crap out of your husband. (And yes, I may use the words "crap" and "sucks" too often.) But I see people say things like, "I have decided to allow nothing but happiness into my life." Sure happiness is a choice but you can't remove all pain and unpleasantness from your life. Unless, perhaps, you are very shallow and not capable of feeling a range of emotions or doing anything productive with those emotions. This takes nothing away from those who are naturally optimistic. I see them out there. They are a mystery to me but I know they exist. It's kind of like when I was reading this ADHD forum once (when I was convinced I had ADD, not ADHD though. I've never had enough energy to claim ADHD). Some of the people were debating the pros and cons of medication. Some were of the opinion that they did not want to be on medication because it masked their true personality and forced them into a mold that would make them fit in with society, making themselves sort of a shadow of their true self. I think there is definitely a point there. (*Disclaimer, I am in no way qualified to tell someone with ADHD what to do.*) I think those of us who occasionally go to "the dark side" (and I'm not talking about Satan here so relax) should embrace that side (and really, this is everyone at least once in a while). Like I said before, don't embrace it so much that it is all encompassing and you can't function. Also, too much of that can get a bit self involved and narcissistic. Embracing the good and the bad brings about a clarity I think. See, I was feeling quite blah when I started writing this and I already feel better.

Don't get me wrong. I know I have a good life. Got the husband, kids, etc, down in a good way. But sometimes the crazy- it's there. I don't want to feed it too much, but I want it to know he has just as much right to be here as happy and well adjusted do too.





Halloween 2010



Isabella is a dead princess if you can't tell and friend is Annabeth from the Percy Jackson books.

Noah is brain injury boy

nerdy Zoe and nerdy friend