Holly’s Happenings

Apparently when I was a kid I was as obsessed with music as I am now. Why do I say this? Well, let me put it to you this way. It’s been 25 years since I graduated from high school which means it’s been about 35 years since I was in 2nd grade. The reason I’m bringing this up is because this time of year ALWAYS brings back a song from a Halloween program that we did in the 2nd grade. After a quick websearch, I’ve found out it’s actually a poem, but my music teacher back then put it to music. But here’s the poem

Trick or Treat

Witches, ghosts, and goblins.
Stealing down the street,
Knock on every door way,
Trick or treat!

When your door is opened,
This is what you meet,
Scary creatures shouting,
Trick or treat!

I remember all of us kids up there on the stage in our masks made from construction paper singing this song, the melody of it is still in my head almost like it was just yesterday that I sang the song…LOL! Remember how it used to be cool to cut a couple of holes in a white sheet for your eyes and go trick or treating as a ghost? And my all time FAVORITE costume, the one I wore most often as a kid, was when I’d borrow a pair of pants and flannel shirt from my grandfather. Then my mom or grandmother would cut holes and sew patches on them in various places. We’d take a handkerchief and fill it full of paper then tie the ends of it around a stick. I’d put the altered clothes on and tie a piece of twine through the belt loops so use like a belt, mom would take black shoe polish and rub it lightly into my face and I’d proclaim I was the BEST hobo ever! LOL

Last night I had to stop at the store on my way home from my orientation to pick up break and milk. It never ceases to amaze me how intricately designed Halloween costumes are these days! They had every type of Halloween costume you could imagine for sale in the store! Long gone are the days of simplicity, replaced with what seems almost like a competition judged by cost rather than the imagination! Yes, I do realize that some kids and parents still do use their imagination and make their own costumes, but judging by the amount of empty space on the costume racks when we’re still four weeks away from Halloween, I’d have to say the people that do are getting fewer and farther between those that don’t!

Yes, I do get frustrated fairly easily these days, but with some things I honestly think that there isn’t anyone on the face of this earth that wouldn’t get frustrated themselves! Like the current situation I’m going through with the kids’ school district!

One of my biggest complaints with this school district has ALWAYS been their complete and total inability to have any type of communication with students parents! It’s so easy to pick up a phone and give parents a message about something that involves their children, but for some reason, it’s just not possible with this school district!

Right now we’re going through a situation with them where we’ve been chasing down a letter than was sent to us going on 12 days ago. The letter is something that is very important, something that should have been received in our mail box no later than a week ago today. But because of a screw up by the school when they were inputting the kids’ information into the computers, they somehow TOTALLY screwed up our address! for our house number and street name it should say 1122 S. Holly’s Road, but for some reason or another, they entered it as 1122 Holly’s S. Road, and for our zip code it should say 43558, but for some reason they put 43528. Now keep in mind that we filled out the information on the cards and paperwork for the school correctly, but for some reason they are incapable of reading something and entering it the way it’s written, they instead choose to put it into the computer in what ever way they see fit.

We finally found out last Thursday that the letter was returned back to the main office for the school district and waited until late Friday afternoon for someone to take two freaking seconds to contact us and let us know exactly which building we needed to go to in order to pick this letter up, since we were told that because it was delivered back to them as undeliverable they legally could not mail it back to us. By the time they got back to us on Friday with the information it was too late to go pick the letter up then, so we made arrangements for my husband to pick it up this morning. GUESS WHAT?? When he got to where he was told to go to pick the letter up, he was told that it had mistakenly been mailed back to us on Friday! EXCUSE ME! You specifically told me on the phone that you COULD NOT mail this letter back to me! We SPECIFICALLY made arrangements to drive all the way out to hell and back to pick the friggin thing up on the next business day only to be told when we get there that you MAILED IT?? And guess what? They mailed it to the screwed up address again!

I swear to God this school district is ran by complete and total ASSTARDS! They’re more worried about not letting a child wear a shirt to school because it’s the incorrect shade of a color or about not letting them wear a vest to school because the stitching INSIDE of the vest is a different color, thus making it not a solid color resulting in a detention for not wearing a solid colored vest. EXCUSE ME, when does the stitching INSIDE of a piece of clothing have ANYTHING to do with the color of it? Especially if that stitching isn’t visible except for if something happens and the collar of it happens to fold back a little bit?

Maybe you all should spend a little more time on giving children the education that they are LEGALLY entitled to rather than focusing on reasons to punish them that don’t affect their education. And maybe, just maybe, you should worry about making sure that these children are truly educated, rather than pushing a failing child through to the next grade, or allowing a child who failed their ENTIRE senior year to graduate, just so that you can pad your numbers and give teachers bonus checks that they in NO WAY deserve!

Against my better judgment, both kids went back to public school this year. Since I waited until the last minute to make the choice about where they were going to go to school, they started a few days late. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I don’t think this is the best decision I’ve ever made, because I really don’t think it is! But due to finances and other things going on in our lives, we honestly didn’t have any other choice right now.

Amazingly, the first week for both kids went pretty good. They are both adjusting well to their new schools and they both did bring home and do homework EVERY night. While it’s not that big of a deal for my daughter to do this, it IS a big deal for my son! He is, without a doubt, your typical slacker! He does only what needs to be done and gets by on the seat of his pants! But he also knows that if this doesn’t chance this year, the seat of those pants is going to be VERY sore! To put it bluntly, I’M DONE! There is no reason for him to be slacking off the way he is in school, he’s intelligent and totally understands the work, he just doesn’t like doing the work.

As for my daughter, she is really enjoying her new school and making new friends! She also was put into the advanced band class, which is TOTALLY cool! And she’s very excited over a paper she brought home to me on Friday. Although she is only in the 8th grade, because she’s in advanced band, she gets the chance to go out on the football field and march with the high school band during a half time show. To say she’s excited about doing this would be a complete understatement! The only “bad” thing about it is the fact that the sheet music for marching band is VERY small and she was having a difficult time reading it.

You see, shortly after this last school year ended, she left her eyeglasses, that had already been replaced twice, on her desk and one of the dogs got a hold of them and totally destroyed them, and right now we aren’t in the financial position to be able to replace them. Fortunately for all of us, it had been a year since her last eye exam so the insurance would cover a new exam as well as new glasses for her. And amazingly I was able to get her an appointment at the eye doctors VERY quickly (i.e. the very next day), and through some strange twist of fate the eyeglasses they said would take about two weeks to come in actually came in two DAYS later…LOL!

Let’s just hope the rest of this school year goes as well as the first week of it has. Personally, I’m not going to hold my breath, because it would be a complete miracle if it did!

My daughter was extremely upset because sometime between Thursday morning and last night her friends had decided to change the date of their end of summer slumber party from next weekend to last night. Since they had no way of getting in touch with her she didn’t know about the change until around 8 last night, which was too late to go. I felt so bad for her, she couldn’t stop crying, and no matter what I said or did, nothing helped.

After crying for about an hour, she was completely drained and I knew that if she could just get some rest, she’d feel better in the morning. Being the little con artist that she is, she batted her puppy dog eyes at me and said something like “I’d feel better if you’d stay with me until I fall asleep”. That was the first sign that she was going to be OK. I gave in and grabbed my pillow and she and I flipped the channels on her TV until we found something we both liked.

The next thing I knew she was tripping out over a mosquito hawk that was on her TV. I told her if it was bothering her that bad to take a flip flop or something and kill it. The next time it landed, she swung the flip flop and made contact, but we couldn’t see where it landed so we weren’t completely sure if she had killed it or not. She then starts in saying stuff like “If I didn’t kill it, it’s going to come back and get me, maybe it will suck my blood out while I’m sleeping”, and stuff like that. We were laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes, but the next thing I knew she was flailing her arms and screaming. When she finally calmed down she told me that a mosquito hawk was flying in her face. WRONG thing to tell me…LOL!

I looked around on the stand next to her bed and found a colored pencil. I’d wait for her to drop her guard for a moment then I’d take the pencil and ever so lightly touch her hair or her arm, making her think it was the mosquito hawk….LOL! I can’t believe we didn’t wake the dogs or my husband up because of how hard we were laughing! Then, out of the middle of nowhere, she wrapped her arms around herself and said “I hug myself at night so that I know there is someone close by that cares”…….ROFL! We were having a riot, and after a couple of stressed out days, it was what we both needed!

Not having internet can stink, but it’s also brought the four of us closer too! I did manage to find a dial up connection that will work until we can get the money together, and we all take turns sitting at my hubby’s laptop to check our email and stuff. So I’m kind of back, but not completely…LOL

I love my daughter, I really do! But honestly, she’s going to be the reason I end up in an insane asylum some day..LOL! It’s been several years since she’s been to a funeral, so much so that she was at an age where it was still OK for me to pick out the clothes she was going to wear. Well, at 13, she won’t let me pick out her clothes any longer, which is probably a good thing.

So far tonight, she’s come out here in at least 6 different pairs of pants or shorts and a minimum of at least a dozen different dress shirts and t shirts wanting me to tell her which ones would look the best to wear to the funeral home Sunday. It’s not so much that I mind her trying all the different clothes on, what I mind is the fact that all of them will wind up on her bedroom floor and in the laundry when she cleans her room tomorrow. **SIGH** The joys of parenting a teen girl.

My daughter is probably the queen of procrastinators! Although she’s known for several weeks that she’s leaving tomorrow and will be gone for a month, she’s been putting off straightening up her room for over two weeks now. It wasn’t that her room was dirty, we had just tore it apart cleaning every inch of it about a month ago. She had just let things pile up and get cluttered, mostly on her dresser and bookshelf.

This morning I told her that she had ran out of time, either she picked it up right then and there or I would, and she wouldn’t be happy with what happened if I did it. That motivated her and she got busy. A little while later I heard her yelling for me, so I went to see what was going on. She had seen some papers and stuff under her bookshelf, so she decided to move it out of the way and clean under it. When she moved it out and picked up the papers, lying under them was the gold anklet that she had been looking for. When she had originally told me she couldn’t find it, I told her to look under and behind her bookshelf and her dresser, I had a feeling that’s where it would be, but she didn’t listen to me. And I don’t have any grandiose plans that she’ll start either, but it was nice to be able to tell her “I told you so”….LOL.

Well, to be honest, she’s not so little any more! My “baby” is 13 today, and it’s so strange to think that 13 years have passed by since she came into this world! She came into this world quicker than anyone expected, and she’s spent the past 13 years forging her way through life exactly how she entered it!

Some days I’m in awe of the young woman that she has become, but I’m so very proud of her! Yes, we do have our rough moments, like last night when she knocked my monitor off it’s stand and it landed on the floor with a sickening thud. She was so scared that I was going to be angry with her, and initially I was, but a monitor can be replaced and she can’t! (The monitor, amazingly, is perfectly fine)

I’ve thought long and hard about what I could give my daughter for her 13th birthday that would show her just how special I think she is. She’s not a little girl anymore, and I needed to find a gift for her that would reflect the importance of this birthday. But no matter what I came up with, it just didn’t seem right, it didn’t give me that “THAT’S IT” feeling!

But my dilemma ended when the UPS man knocked on my door and delivered a package from PearlParadise.com. I received a BEAUTIFUL string of black freshwater pearls from them, and when I opened the package and seen them, I KNEW they would be the perfect gift for my daughters 13th birthday! The beautiful leather box that they come in lets you know, even before you open it, that what is inside is very special, and I wanted to let my daughter know just how special she was.

Gone are the days of dolls, play dough and coloring, they’ve been replaced by days of clothes, makeup and boys. Soon we’ll have proms and in a few years she’ll be graduating from high school and hopefully college, and maybe after that the day will come that her daddy walks her down the aisle. And thanks to PearlParadise.com, she’ll have a beautiful string of black freshwater pearls to wear around her neck!

I’m not sure about where you live, but this time of the year in NW Ohio, we have frequent thunderstorms. Sometimes they’re quick with no major weather, just a few rain showers, but lately we’ve had some very strong storms pop up out of the middle of nowhere!

A couple of weeks ago we had three strong storms come through in a 12-15 hour time frame. All three storms packed some fairly heavy winds and rain which caused brief power outages for us, and all but one were in the middle of the night. I was watching the local news and keeping an eye on the radar maps I stalk online when I know storms are coming in, and I warned my son both times that it really would be in his best interest to shut his computer down before they came in. Did he listen to me? NOPE!

So rather than be safe and shut down, he stayed on his computer and over a period of about 15 minutes, our power went on and off at least 5 times. Since his computer was on when the power went out, when the power would come back on, it would try to restart. Just as it was finishing the power up cycle, the power would go out again and the whole “cycle” would start all over again. I finally took over and simply pulled his power cord from the computer because I knew if I didn’t, his computer would totally fry, and I can’t afford to replace it right now!

Unfortunately, when the power finally came back on for good and we plugged the power cord back into his computer and allowed it to fully power up, we realized we hadn’t completely avoided damage to his computer. I’m not sure if it was related to what happened from the storm or just one of those things that happens, but his computer wouldn’t recognize one of his ram sticks and he ended up with too little memory to properly run his OS. Thankfully we had other ram sticks in the house and were able to fix the problem right away!

The best thing about this is that we’re currently under a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, and when I told him, he shut his computer down without my even having to ask….LOL! Now if I can just get him to learn how to bring his dirty dishes to the kitchen sink in a more timely manner, I’ll be happy!

I thought I’d give you a little bit of an update from this post where I went on a semi rant about how I was tired of everyone blaming me for the problems in my family. While I do take the blame for the wrongs that I have done, a dysfunctional family doesn’t happen just because of one person.

I did, for the most part, cut off communication with my sister for almost 2 weeks. After getting an email reply from her that said “Fine, good luck”, I replied back to her simply saying that there is no need for her to talk to me that way, that I’ve dealt with what I’m going through for most of my adult life, I’m used to the road blocks and hassles, but that I do get through them. She, of course, couldn’t accept that and came back with a “Talk to you like what, I was just trying to help” reply. As much as I wanted to write her back and give her a piece of my mind, I decided that it was best to just keep my mouth shut! Amazingly, after receiving daily calls from my mother prior to the email exchange with my sister, the calls from my mother also stopped. I love both of them very much, but I am so sick of the game that they play going back and forth telling each other what I’ve said to them. I wasn’t angry with my mom, I never once did anything but listen to her suggestions and use the ones that I could. But she “assumed” that since I wasn’t very happy with my sisters “interference”, it meant I wasn’t happy with hers either, and nothing could have been further from the truth!

As much as I hate to admit it, taking a break from both of them actually alleviated quite a bit of stress from my life and allowed me to put the focus on things in my own home! I feel like I’ve made some good progress with the kids! We’re not arguing as much as we had been, and they are actually doing a decent job keeping up with the chores that I give them. My daughter has made HUGE progress when it comes to her room. Last Sunday she and I cleaned it from ceiling to floor, washing walls, throwing stuff out, etc. I’m THRILLED to say that her room is still as clean as it was when we finished up last Sunday, which is major for her! She’s done a wonderful job of putting things back when she’s done with them, putting away the clothes that she’s tried on but decided not to wear rather than letting them pile up on the floor and putting away the clean laundry that I give her. She has also done an awesome job of following my rule of having nothing to eat or drink in her room other than water. There has only been 2 times this week where she didn’t follow that rule, but she was quick to bring the dishes out of her room when she realized she shouldn’t have them in there!

I’ve also got to say that my son’s attitudes have really calmed down as well! He’s been much more receptive to me when I ask him to do things, and if he does get an attitude with me I simply look at him and say “This will stop now”, which usually gets him to snap out of his attitude pretty quick. He’s been an awesome helper when I’ve asked him to do things and he’s also done a much better job at tuning his sister down when she’s doing things that he finds annoying, which is a major step for him! There have also been many more times over the past week or so that the kids have been getting along than times when they were fighting with each other, which is a major improvement!

Hopefully we can keep things going, but I also know that it’s not very realistic to expect things to always go well. But it sure has been nice!!

My daughter is 12, but quick to remind me that she’s just a few days away from turning 13. From the day she came into this world she has been a little on the petite side. When she was born, she was so short that we actually had to purchase a couple of preemie outfits so that she had something to wear that wasn’t falling off her tiny frame.

Other than having a case of double pneumonia at the age of 4, she has been the picture of health. She’s out going, active and participates in several different sports in school. Yesterday she had a doctors appointment and was weighed and measured for the first time in a few months. She was THRILLED to find out that she finally passed the 5 foot mark, even if only by 3/4 of an inch, but she was very upset to find out that her current weight was 110 pounds. Even though the nurse showed her that she’s actually right on the mark for her height and weight, she was not happy!

When we left she immediately went into the “I have to go on a diet, I need to exercise more and you REALLY need to buy me some diet pills so that I can lose some weight”. While I do empathize with her feelings, I spent the bulk of the night trying to convince her that she really is not overweight! We went online and I found other charts that showed her that for a girl of her height, her weight is perfectly fine. Although she didn’t buy that part, she did agree with the fact that at 12 going on 13, diet pills probably aren’t her best option.

It’s a sad fact of today’s society that many young girls are pressured into feeling that they are overweight, when in fact they really are not. Too many young people are obsessed with being as thin as they can with no care or concern as to what future problems this obsession can cause for them. As parents it is our responsibility to make sure that our children are given information about how important it is to eat nutritious foods to keep their bodies healthy! When they become adults, if they still feel they need to take supplements to help them with weight loss, the choice will be theirs.

I’ve spent the bulk of the past 15 years being a stay at home mom. I understand and accept that besides taking care of my children and their needs, I’m also responsible for the bulk of the work around the house. I’ll admit that I do have my days were I slack off pretty badly, but I always get things caught up too.

But here’s my “problem” and I’m hoping all the other parents that read here can give me their thoughts and input on this! My children are no longer little anymore. My oldest is a few weeks away from being able to get his learners permit to drive a car and my youngest is, and I quote, “43 days away from being 13, so I’m technically a teenager mom”. That being said, they are MORE than old enough to help out with chores around the house. I don’t ask much of them, just some of the basic stuff like helping with the dishes, bringing their dirty clothes out of their rooms and picking up after themselves. For the most part, they do pretty good, but there is one thing that my daughter does, well, doesn’t do actually, that is driving me up a wall!

I have asked and asked and asked her to PLEASE turn her jeans right side out when she puts them in the dirty clothes. But for some reason or another, every last pair of her jeans that are in the laundry still end up inside out. Yes, I do realize that this is something VERY minor, but her inability to respect my wishes is grating on my last nerve! So, here’s what I was thinking about doing. Since she seems to like bringing her clothes to me inside out, I thought that I would give them ALL back to her, washed, folded, and hung, inside out. Or should I just absolutely refuse to wash the clothes that are inside out? I don’t know what to do, I honestly don’t, I just know that it’s getting frustrating. It’s the little things that seem to get to me the most, as well as her almost constant lack of respect for what I ask of her.

So parents, give me your input, because I honestly don’t know what to do anymore. Do I try the giving everything to her inside out method and see if that makes her realize what a major pain it is turning everything right side out? Or is there something that you’ve tried that works even better? I’m TOTALLY open to suggestions!!

For the past 6 weeks or so, my husband and I have been in the planning stages with my step daughter for our two children to spend some time with her this summer. We’ve got the date for them to fly out to the east coast down, but had never really talked about a return date. My husband and I were thinking a week, maybe 10 days, but I was totally blown away when I was talking with my step daughter last night and she said “I’d like to keep them for the month”. Even now, twelve hours later, I’m still not sure what to think…LOL!

I honestly don’t have a problem with the kids spending a month with their big sister, she’s an awesome young lady who is very responsible! The things that I worry about include the fact that the kids have never been away from home for that long of a period of time and it’s been many years since they’ve spent any significant amount of time with their older sister. Yes, they are teenagers and they do need to learn to be away from home like this and I know they’ll have a wonderful time with their sister, she has a TON of stuff planned to do with them, I just worry.

One of my options is to shop around the different airlines for the best buy on flights that would allow a flexible return date, or I could just simply purchase one way flights for the trip out there, talk to them after the first week to see how they’re doing and how they’re feeling about being so far from home, and decide then when they’ll come home and but one way tickets home for them.

It’s just nerve wracking, and yes, I know that I’m probably making more out of it than I need to. Maybe a month away from each other is exactly what we need, especially my husband and I! But WOW, hearing the words really put me in shock!

I figured I’d better stop by and give you an update about what’s happened since my post last week. Nothing with the situation involving my daughter has been settled, but that was to be expected because of the fact that this week is the OAT testing, and every student needs to be present for that. However, there was something that happened last night that has both my husband and I very upset, my husband more so than me.

There was a track meet last night and my husband went and took one of the dogs with him. While he was walking around with the dog he turned a corner to see the main girl that we’ve had problems with going through our daughters bags at the same time that one of her friends drop kicked our daughters lunch box 20 yards across the football field. When they seen my husband coming towards them they ran away, but several other kids that were sitting there watching these two do this came forward telling my husband what all had been done. The girl we’ve had so many problems with had taken my daughters cell phone out of her bag and had been making calls with it while digging through my daughters bag. There is also a missing digital camera, but we’re not 100% certain it was in her bag yesterday.

My husband gathered up my daughters things and went to the track coach to get our daughter and told the coach she was leaving. When the coach asked what was going on, my hubby explained about what he had just seen and the coach was IRATE! He told my husband he understood and said it was fine for our daughter to leave because all that was left to do was clean up and the other kids could take care of that, he also assured my husband that what happened would be dealt with. This morning my husband took our daughter to school so that he could go in and talk to the principal, but amazingly the principal had a feeling one of us would be coming in. The coach had called him at home last night telling him what had happened at the track meet. The principal told my husband that after testing was over for today the situation would be dealt with immediately and that he would call us and let us know the results. My husband made it clear to the principal that this kind of harassment was going to stop now or we would take it up to the next step. He also took in our daughters lunch box that was ruined because of being drop kicked across the football field.

I just want this to stop, both what is being done to my daughter and what ever my own daughter is doing. It takes two for a situation to get this out of hand! But I also cannot believe that the girl that has been doing this is stupid enough to now be caught by both myself and my husband. Does she not realize that because of everything that has happened lately that people are keeping an eye on what’s going on? Or is it more that the only people that are going to do anything about it are my husband and myself and that’s why she just keeps doing stuff like this? It’s just so frustrating! I’ll update later when we hear what all happened!

After the events that unfolded at one of my children’s schools yesterday, I find myself sitting this morning thinking about how much things have changed since I was a kid! When I was in school, you felt safe and supported. Yes, there were bullies back then, there always has been and there always will be, but they were usually put in their place and the bullying came to a stop. The same goes for kids teasing other kids, it’s always been around and it always will be, but the teachers and principal always knew when a line was crossed and it was time to put a stop to it!

I have never been a parent that sits back and says my children are perfect and/or innocent, nor will I ever be. I know how my kids are here at home and I know the things they have done in the past. But you have to try to move on from things that people have done and you have to try to give them a chance at changing their lives. Just because someone does something once, or more, doesn’t always mean they’re continuing to do so. I “try” to give people the benefit of the doubt until they give me reason not to.

At one point yesterday it became necessary for me to pick my child up from school because of some teasing and making fun of that was being done by their peers. Although my child had told me that these persons had given them problems and had been just plain mean and vindictive to them for some time, I chose to think that my child had been doing the normal thing by stretching or twisting the truth to make things worse than they were. But imagine how I felt when I walked into my child’s school to pick them up and seen a group of children standing outside of the office doorway laughing and pointing and saying some not so nice things. And imagine how surprised I was as I neared the office only to see that when this group of kids moved away my child was sitting there with tears running down their face and that it was my child that was the focus of their attention, and that the office staff was just standing there, watching and allowing it to happen without saying or doing anything!

I’m not going to go into details because it’s just not necessary, but I will say that as a parent, this was probably one of the most heartbreaking moments I’ve ever experienced. To see my child sitting there, literally falling apart, and absolutely no one was supporting them or making these children stop what they were doing. I can’t help but wonder what type of parents these children have that would allow their children to think treating someone like this is totally acceptable. I also can’t help but wonder how these children’s parents would have reacted if they had seen their child being treated the way that I seen mine being treated! I kept my cool, but I did cry in front of the office staff and I did tell one of them that I could not believe that I seen what I did and that it was 100% UNACCEPTABLE and I would not tolerate it! And before you tell me to just deal with it, you need to know that what was being said and done went WAY beyond the realm of normal teasing.

So many things have changed since I was a young child myself. Some of those changes are good, some, not so good. But schools really need to stand up and pay attention to what is going on. And parents need to teach their children to not treat other people how they would not want to be treated themselves! Yes, kids are going to pick on each other, that’s simply part of life. But when it gets to the point that it affects a child so severely that the child is an emotional wreck, it needs to STOP! NO parent should ever have to witness what I did yesterday. To see your child in the emotional state that they are in and know that the people who are supposed to make sure that they feel safe and supported just sit there and allow this to go on is almost unfathomable!

As parents, we need to teach our children that treating people like this is NOT acceptable! No, no child is perfect, and at some point in time they are going to pick on someone. But to do it non stop to the point that it not only affects the child at home, it also affects the child at school, is simply too much! Would I feel this way if it were another child being treated like this than mine? ABSOLUTELY! No child should ever have to be put in this type of a situation, nor should they ever be made to feel this way!

OK, I’m going to shut up now, because I’m starting to repeat myself here, thank you for listening!

I’m so flippin pissed right now, it’s not even funny! I try my best to have mornings around here go as well as possible, I don’t like the thought of my kids walking out the door to go to school being upset, I don’t think it’s a good way to start the day. I’ve known for a VERY long time that neither of my kids are morning people, and that’s fine. We’ve made adjustments and make sure that we set their alarms earlier than what is actually necessary, that way they have a little more time to get ready for school.

This morning my daughter decided to wait until about 10 minutes before we have to walk out the door for the 5 minute drive to where she gets on the bus to START getting ready. Now mind you, I’ve been in and out of her room telling her to get up and get moving for almost an hour now. Just a couple of minutes ago she lays into me about the fact that I didn’t come in and make sure she was up and moving at the time that her alarm went off, and that’s why she’s running so late this morning getting ready. EXCUSE ME? I’ve been in and out of your room since 6:10 telling you to get up and get moving, yet you laid there NOT getting ready until 6:42, and now all of a sudden it’s MY fault? I DON’T THINK SO AND YOU ARE GROUNDED!

So now, rather than a 5 minute drive to the bus stop, I have a 25 minute drive to her school because we won’t make the bus in time. You can bet your butt that her alarm is going to be set 30 minutes earlier and I’ll come in her room with spray bottles and air horns if she’s not up and getting ready within FIVE minutes of that time! I’m SOOOOOOOOO done with this bullshit!

I know that raising a girl is much different than raising a boy and my almost 13 year old daughter is proving that more and more with each passing day! No matter what I do for her and what I buy for her, it’s just not the right thing that I should have done or bought. If I buy her a new shirt, it’s not the right style or color. If I rearrange her closet like I had been talking about doing, I didn’t put things where SHE thinks they should have gone. And if I purchase something like hair products or acne treatment products she goes into this rant about how it’s not the best acne treatment product I could have purchased.

I know it’s the age and stage of life she’s going through right now, and I really am trying hard to not take the things she says and does personally, but she’s just about pushed me to the edge today. I’ve been on her for two weeks now to clean her room, and bring me out her dirty clothes. She’s been whining non stop about how she can’t find clean clothes to wear and I’ve pointed out to her time and time again that if she’d just bring me her dirty clothes, she wouldn’t be having that problem. Maybe I’m wrong, but she’s the one that has let her room become the disgusting pig sty that it is. I’ve cleaned it for her several times over the past few months and within a week or two, it’s completely trashed again, so I’m DONE! If she wants her room to look like that, it’s on her because I’m sick of working my tail off only to have her turn around in a week or two and have it look just like it did before I spent a day cleaning it.

So now she’s in her room screaming and yelling, throwing things and telling me what a horrible parent I am because I’m not letting her do what she wants to do, instead I’m making her clean up her mess. She cried that if I’d just help her she’d get busy and I told her to get a good start on it to show me she’s serious about getting it cleaned up and I’d consider helping her, to which she replied “SC**W YOU”. Sorry kid, you’re not getting ANY help from me because if I’d have talked to my parents like that when I was a kid, i wouldn’t have been able to sit for weeks!

Before I get busy this morning I thought I’d share some of the pictures we’ve taken of Sage over the past couple of days! There are quite a few, so I’ll post the first one, then put the rest after the “fold”, so be sure to click the “read more” link to see the rest of the pictures!

Things are definitely going better with her! Hubby came up with a heck of an idea last night to help her sleep! We are putting her in a pet carrier at night because she’s just too little to be out and about and there are just too many worst case scenarios that could happen if we didn’t. The first night wasn’t the best of nights with her. Every couple of hours she would bark and cry until I came out and sat near her. I never took her out of the carrier because, just like with babies, I wanted her to learn to soothe herself back to sleep, so I just sat near her so she would know I was there. My hubby had the idea last night of bringing her carrier in and putting it on his night stand next to the bed. That way she could see that we were right there, and it worked BEAUTIFULLY! She slept through the night except for one minor wake up! YAY!!! She’s really getting comfortable with her surroundings and the other dogs are calming down about her as well, so I figure things will be settled in and good by the weekend, at the latest!

OK, on to the pictures! This first one is my absolute FAVORITE of all the ones that have been taken, thus the reason it’s above the fold…LOL!

Yes, I know, there are very few people that agree with me when I say that, but I honestly do look forward to being able to “Spring Forward”. It does mean losing an hour of sleep, but it also means that it is light in the morning when the kids are getting ready for school. One of the not so good things about time chage is going around making sure the time on everyone’s alarm clocks and watches gets reset. Around here, we wear your basic run of the mill type of watches that only take a couple of minutes to reset the time on. My dream watch, which is a Patek watch, tells the time for two different time zones, so rather than having to reset one dial, it would require me to reset two. I’m not complaining though, it’s an absolutely gorgeous watch that I’d be VERY proud to own. But for right now I think I’ll stick to just having to set one watch dial!

Speaking of time change, I have to tell you something funny that happened today! For some reason, my son slept until a little after 1:00 this afternoon. Yes, I do realize that’s quite late in the day, but since he’s been having some pretty major sleeping problems lately, I thought it was the best thing I could do for him. But, when he woke up, he thought it was just after 12 noon. Sometime around 3:00 I said something about the time and he looked at me and looked at the clock that was hanging on the wall (that we had forgotten to change the time on), and was trying to tell me I was wrong about the time. Once the whole time change thing set in he was like “That’s totally not fair, I lost an hour and you let me sleep so late and now my day is almost over, that’s so totally wrong and you’re mean”…LOL! Poor kid, I knew he needed the sleep though! Hopefully by summer time the sleep problems will be a thing of the past. I’m 99% sure that the problem has to do with one of his meds and at the doctors appointment Tuesday I’m going to talk to the doctor about getting both kids off their meds after the end of the school year! If nothing else, it will give their bodies a break from the meds for the summer!

OK, I’m sure my regular readers know that I do not normally blog about the types of things that I’m about to write about, but this time I simply can’t help myself. Partially because when I told my kids I was going to blog about this they said “NO YOU WON’T”, and partially because, well, I’m sorry, it’s just TOOOOOOO funny! (and somewhat gross)

The kids are off school on a snow day today and the morning was a nightmare! The kids were fighting all morning long about anything and everything you can imagine and were completely driving me up a wall! Fortunately, they seem to have calmed down some this afternoon! Sometime after 12, I decided that I REALLY needed to get a shower! We have 2 full bathrooms here in the house, the one up front has a tub/shower combo and the one back here just has a shower stall. For some reason the shower back here just does not get good water pressure. We’ve checked everything to make sure there are no water leaks or anything like that that could cause the lack of water pressure, but found nothing. When we first moved in, the kids actually preferred the shower back here because the one up front has a window in it that has that bumpy opaque glass in it and it freaked them out to think about showering in front of a window even though we proved to them that NOTHING is seen outside! In time, however, their fears of using the shower with the window passed and eventually it ended up that no one was using this shower back here, so we actually turned it into our indoor storage area for wood for the wood burner…LOL! But the commode in both bathrooms are regularly used, which is VERY handy in a house with four people!

So, back to my decision that I REALLY needed to take a shower…LOL! (See, us old people tend to get off track now and then…LOL) As I went to take my shower I went to use the commode and upon lifting the seat was greeted by the smiling face of a near 6 foot long Mr. Hanky! Yes, I am drastically over exaggerating when I say 6 foot, but I’m not over exaggerating when I say that the size of said Mr. Hanky is something that should NOT come out of a human! The worst part is that I have what could probably qualify for the weakest stomache on the face of the earth! I can see something or smell something and sometimes even hear something and will IMMEDIATELY start gagging! So when I seen the version of Mr. Hanky that was greeting me, yup, you guessed it, it made me gag!

Since I knew it did not come from myself or my husband I went out to where the kids were and informed them that one of them needed to take care of the situation ASAP! This led to an argument consisting of the two “perpetrators” insisting that said Mr. Hanky did NOT come from them. OK, let’s be amateur detectives here for a moment. The inhabitants of this house consist of myself, my husband, my two children and three dogs. Neither my husband or myself use said bathroom except just before showering and none of the three dogs are trained to use the toilet, and even if they were, well, I won’t go into that here…LOL! That being said, the ONLY other people that have been in this house today are my darling children, both of which almost exclusively use the front bathroom.

Eventually my darling daughter volunteered to make sure that Mr. Hanky was properly disposed of, all the while giving us plunge by plunge details about what was going on…LOL! It was one of those priceless moments in life, if you have the state of mind to find things like this funny! And it totally turned our day around, at least for now. So, yes, it is a bit gross, and yes, it’s definitely not someting that I write about here regularly, and for anyone that was offended, I’m sorry! But I just couldn’t help myself!

As I talked about in this post, we have three dogs. Most of the time the dogs don’t even bother me, they’re pretty well behaved and completely house broken. As long as they have food, water, their toys and a comfy place to lay down they’re happy! Every once in a while we’ll have problems with them because they’ve chewed up something that was NOT meant to be a chew toy. Like last week. For some reason the baby of the pack seen my daughters digital camera on her desk and decided it would be a good thing to chew on and totally ruined the camera! It’s times like these that “almost” make me reconsider our decision to take on the third dog.

If my daughter had things her way, we’d not only have the three dogs, but we’d also have kitties as well! When she was a toddler we had a cat that we rescued from the local animal shelter. He was a big, fat black cat whose name was Homie. Homie ROCKED as far as cats go! He was lovable, he would sit on your lap and let you play with him and pet him, and he never once had an accident outside of the litter box. But we discovered that my daughter was severely allergic to cats and had to find a new home for Homie. We were all bummed about this, but we know that the family we gave him to gave him a wonderful home, so that did make things a little easier.

Over the years, however, my daughters allergy to cats has vanished and we have had many arguments with her over the fact that she has decided since she is no longer allergic to cats that she just HAS to have one for a pet. She has even gone to the extent of showing me all of the cute cat products that are now available and how fun it would be to “have a cute little kitty around the house”. Yes, I will admit, it is tempting because I do love cats! But I don’t like cleaning litter boxes and I do worry that the dogs will view the pretty little kitten as a morning snack…LOL.

So for now, I’ll let her keep bugging me with all the cute little cat toys, collars, clothes and accessories she finds online and in the stores. Three dogs are more than enough for this family and even though kitties are cute and cuddly, we just don’t need another pet right now! Maybe I can hold her off long enough until she’s out and on her own, then the choice of having a cat will be completely up to her!