Okay - so I threw out his winter boots but

THIS IS NOT MY FAULT!





Just because, as I was tossing them in the trash yesterday, I said aloud...."watch, we'll get 3ft of snow now" does not make me responsible for what happened overnight.

Honestly, if I thought I had that much control over what goes on around me I'd be buying a lottery ticket and saying something like....."watch, we'll win 3million dollars now".

I'll let you know if that happens and if it does then yes, I will take the blame for the snow but until then, this one ain't on me.

I personally blame the school.

And field trips.

The field trip scheduled for Wednesday was cancelled due to weather - in the form of massive, ark worthy amounts of rain.

It was rescheduled for today and I doubt the grade 1 classes will be heading out to the snake dens to see the red-sided garter snakes today either. I'm pretty sure snakes don't dig the snow anymore than I dig them.

This is my 4th child to make the annual 1st grade trek out to the snake dens and each year they ask "mom, will you be a parent volunteer on the field trip" and each year I pass on the opportunity. Actually it's more like an 'over my dead body' sort of reply. Sorry. Not my thing kids. Go watch Anaconda with your father and leave me alone.

I get the heebie-geebies just thinking about wigglie little snakes. When Emily went on her trip to the dens one of the father's took amazing photos and I was fortunate (?) enough to receive a bunch which I scrapbooked. That was hard enough seeing my little girl holding a snake in a photo. Don't think I could have handled it in person.

Enough about snakes. Ewwww. Ick.

Back to the weather. Ewwww. Ick.

So there's this creek in my backyard. Flooded like crazy this spring. It's been a couple weeks since I'd taken a walk down there so I went wandering Tuesday night and took some updated water level pictures. I'm so glad I did because the sky opened up in the wee hours of that night and it poured buckets for a good portion of the day on Wednesday.

The "before" on the left, taken on Tuesday afternoon and the "after" on the right taken on Wednesday afternoon following about 12hours of heavy rainfall.

Aside from the weather sucking so did pretty much everything else.

I spent a lot of time - just me, myself and my gamecube on the couch this week avoiding everything, everyone and the endless phone calls from 1-800, credit card companies, the dentist, the truck leasing company etc. Adding to my crappy week was Al repeatedly saying things like "Are you going to get dressed today? Are you going to go to town today? Ae you going to call about that job today? Are you going to call back about that job today? ARGH!!!!

I did call. I did talk to someone and things looked good but when she didn't call back the next day or the day after he started again "Are you going to call again about that job today? Maybe you should call so and so about a different job"

Add to that the phone calls from people telling me about all the new people being trained at the store where I've been hoping to get hired or worse yet going into the store and seeing for myself all the trainees. It was depressing and I didn't want to leave my couch......so I didn't unless absolutely necessary. That's right. I admit it. I spent alot of time on the couch looking for spaceship parts and trying not to get all my little alien friends killed in the process. Nintendo Pikmin is WAY addictive. 4:30 in the morning addictive. Opppps. Kinda slept in and the kids missed the bus once ---- okay twice (the 2nd time it wasn't because of the gamecube though) this week.

Anyway. The week was kind of a bust. Laundry. Pikmin. Ignoring phonecalls. Moping around and feeling like crap. Even last night I was in no way thrilled at being forced off my couch to attend a bowling banquet but since Al was working I had no option.

BUT

While picking up a few things at the store for the banquet the week suddenly got a whole lot better. The girl from the store who I'd talked to early in the week and was supposed to hear back from and didn't spotted me and came over to talk. And just like I thought - she'd been really busy and just hadn't had a chance to get back to me (and all Al's fussing and stressing and making me feel 2 inches tall and like I wasn't going to get this job at all was for nothing) and right then and there we made arrangements for me to start probably wednesday of next week.

Whoooo Hoooo!

I'm so excited.

I still don't know what exactly I'll be doing or what sort of hours I'll have but I'm ((((this close)))) to having a job and the relief is just unbelievably wonderful.

And today...... I still spent some time on the couch playing gamecube and I've realized it's not because I've been in a funk and didn't want to get off the couch.....it's because the game is just so damn fun. I can't wait till the kids go to bed so I can have my turn again....and Al works till 2 so I won't even have to share the tv with him. Heeeheeeheee.

Gonna go see if the kids want to go outside and make a snowman now. Anyone know where I packed the mittens?

Have a wonderful long-weekend.

~K

The Good, The Bad & The Damp

today is the first day all week that I haven't felt the need to take a nap by 10am. I think that has to do with the fact that I went to bed before 10pm last night and although I woke up at 1am (call of nature) and 6am (call of technology - darn kid's cell phone alarm is set for 6am! wth?!?!) and finally got up at 7:15. I think I've finally recovered from the weekend. Now if I could just get my house to recover from the weekend all would be golden. My scrapbook stuff is still scattered about.

We've had a good week/bad week around here and it seems, with the rain that began falling overnight....the rest of the week shall be a damp one, not to mention loud and muddy. Proof of this was when I opened the back door this morning. Since I'd gone to bed early, nobody thought to let the fat cat or the fatter dog in for the night. One was quite cranky about this fact and told me so. The other just left a trail of paw prints behind him as he brought his overweight self into my kitchen and shook. Point taken oh non-vocal mutt. This is the kind of weather where you just want to stay indoors.....and I haven't decided yet if I'm more inclined to make the kids stay inside and brave the sounds of cooped up kids or kick em outside and deal with the inevitable mud and laundry. Since Owen left his jacket outside last night, I'm already ahead of the game as far as wet clothes go.

I think this rain also puts a brief stop to the walks we've been taking lately. Okay. I admit. Mostly it's been Al and the kids walking but I did take them one night while he was at work. This may sound silly but this is a new activity for us. Not the walking part, but the walking around here part. Living on a busy highway, it's not exactly high on my list of things to encourage the children to do and up until now we've limited our walks to being an 'in town' activity. Now that the kids are older, we're more comfortable (ish....i found it way stressful personally) with taking the 1/4 mile walk along the side of the highway to the gravel road and then letting the kids run wild as we walk a half mile or so before turning around and heading back. Somehow I'm not keen on taking that trek in the rain or even shortly after any rain as the cars go flying past us is sure to make for loads of laundry.

I must say, I'm a little nervous about the start of this rain. A couple of the blogs I read on a daily basis have mentioned lately an abundance of rainfall of biblical proportions and there has been mention of Ark living....or indoor living a time or two as well. We are only on day one of the rain here and I sure hope it doesn't last too long. I don't like boats. Of course, I don't like snow shovels either and I heard rumor of dropping temperatures and the possibilities of this rain going all flakey on me.

Hearing the rain on the roof when I first woke up this morning did bring a slight smile to my face though.....because I am not outside working in it. Hahaha It's funny how perspective changes things. Closing our business was hard (and still is hard at times) but we realize more each day how much of a blessing it has been. Regular readers may remember Al's doctors visit when he was getting that physical for his class 1 license and the concern his doctor had with his blood pressure and weight. Well, he went for a follow-up earlier this week and his blood pressure is almost perfect. That new low-stress, minumum wage job of his seems to be working wonders. The lack of money....and lack of ice cream seems to be helping too. He's dropped 5lbs.

Of course my blood pressure is probably making up for his as I struggle to make ends meet and deal with the mountain of paperwork still left to do for the business. Selling those trucks parked infront of my house - constant reminders of money owed to people that we won't have until they sell - would help too. Seems the guy we thought would for sure buy them is just yanking us around and now he says he doesn't need them.....right now. Ugh! General consensus is he figures since the trucks are so specialized there won't be a huge demand for them so he's got time and by waiting as long as possible till we will be so desperate we have no choice but to let them go for cheap. He doesn't realize that the longer he waits the more money we will need and we've had other people ask about them....although nothing has come of their interest either so far.

On top of this money stuff....... I'm sure I've found those 5lbs Al lost. Maybe I need to go for that walk tonight - rain or not. Naw....think I'll just go make a batch of brownies and stay inside where it's warm and dry and listen to the cat complain. He's asked to go out twice already but then just sits in the doorway looking at me like it's my fault it's still raining.

~K

This is a Public Service Announcement of the Murphey's Law Weather System

Don't say I didn't warn you.

I'm packing up all the kids winter coats, snowpants & boots.....well except Owen's because he's still wearing his. It's the only thing he has that fits him and I can't find a pair of shoes in his size anywhere in this town.

It's been quite a few weeks since they've needed snowpants and a week or so that they have been in their spring jackets and sweaters and the ground seems to be drying up fairly well so I'm going to take the chance and pack the winter stuff away. Just don't blame me when 3 ft of snow falls. It's not my fault!

A year ago this weekend the temps soared to almost 30 degrees....you remember....those first few days of the three weeks of Summer we had last year. I don't think we are quite to that point yet but the weather has been fairly decent recently so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

On second thought, I just looked at the Weather Network and they are calling for rain/snow showers and light flurries on Monday/Tuesday next week. Maybe I should wait a little longer before I pack this stuff away. I dunno. What do you think?

~K

Why you should google things before you commit

Some thought and planning while trying to come up with a name for my 'other blog', my scrapbooking one devoted to the occasional bursts of creativity and my scrapbooking/stamping biz, would have gone a long way.

Seems I overlooked the function of google (or other platforms) searches and didn't really test out different versions of the blog's name prior to it's creation.

I have a stat tracker on the blog so I can see who's stalking me reading my blog (hi sis...and you there sitting at your desk at work) and I can see what searches lead people to my blog.

Well it seems my scrap blog's name has a slight similarity to another site and half the people who end up there are looking for P*rn. Bet they are disapointed when they don't get what they are looking for huh. It will take a bit of work but I'm thinking I may relaunch the blog under another name and transfer the archives over. Really, I'd much rather not be attracting that kind of attention to myself .......plus it's a little disapointing to log into my stats and see I have 16 new visitors and then realize that only 3 of them were actually there to see me.


I'm thinking I could rename this one to Chaos & Confusion and I'll make the other one An Occasional Burst of Creativity.......and I have NO IDEA why I didn't think of THAT little bit of brilliance to begin with. Probably because my bursts of creativity are only occasional in nature.


Well, I'm off to enjoy the entire day of having the house to myself. Kids at school. The Mr. working dayshift. I'm on my own till 4pm and LOVE IT!!!! Mucho neglected house lately so I'm actually looking forward to cleaning it.



I'd say I'm in a Spring Cleaning mood but take a look out my front door this morning........does THIS look like spring to you?





The rain has turned to snow and we are supposed to get lots of it.


Do you think I should bundle up and go get that shovel? We might need it.

Seriously? Seriously! Seriously!!!!

The furnace has been jacked up to 25 and has been running continuously for the past 3 hours so WHY is the house getting colder not warmer? Why?Why!Why? Mother Nature has got to cut me some slack cuz I simply cannot afford to even open the Hydro bill at this rate never mind pay it. My hands are so cold I can barely type and I feel a breeze on my back as I sit here. The cold is seeping in through every thin wall and crack imaginable and it's so so depressing. Someone please turn off the A/C outside. I so wasn't kidding when I was asked what we were doing for Christmas and I said....'don't know about the rest of them but I'm planning on being in Florida'.