Busy Days

The party last night was okay, I guess. We had issues & there was a lot of tension, which, mostly started at our house much earlier in the day. We did eventually get everything ironed out and we had a pretty good time. Today Rhi is in her room with her friend Tiffanie, packing her room like she works for a New York Moving Company, getting it all ready to go right after graduation.

My house is packed to the gills with people, because her friend has been staying with us, too, because she's 19 years old & her parents treat her like a child. She has tried over & over to get out on her own & they start threatening her & she goes back. I'm giving her a safe place to be so that she can get a job & start getting on her own two feet. After Rhi moves, she'll stay with her for awhile.

This evening, we're heading back to Dawn's fort he weekly gaming session. I'm hoping Garrett & Keri will want to go, but if they don't, I'm okay with that, too. I'm so emotionally wiped out at this point that I'm almost tempted to stay home myself!

Blech.

I really need to hop in the shower really quick before we go anywhere, but I'm just so out of it today. Have you ever been so tired that you wished you had one of those shower chairs in there, and could just sit down & shower? I swear, I'm at that point, right now.

My allergies are just playing hell with me right now & I seem to have a never-ending headache anymore. I get so frustrated with it & with myself that at times, I just want to scream. I know that would, very likely, just make it worse, but man, I'm sure tempted.

Yay!!

Garrett & Keri are here! She's a little shy & quiet, but I think she'll loosen up once she gets to know us a little bit better. I know I'm always a little shy when I first meet people. I think everything will be just fine, honestly. She obviously cares about him & that's all that really matters to me at this point. Anyway, Dawn called me awhile ago & invited us over to barbecue this evening, which is great, since we had planned to go over there to party anyway & all.

I'm going to go to the store here in a little bit & grab some mixers & chips, and maybe look at the garden center. I know they won't have anything like teak patio furniture, but they should have some pretty nice stuff & I really just want to get a few ideas at this point. I'm so excited about summer!

Party Time!

I'm so excited, Garrett & Keri will be here in less than 24 hours! I can hardly wait & this past week has felt like it lasted a month or so. I haven't seen him for 2 years (he came out for Erin's graduation & was only here 3 days) and I've never met his fiance, Keri.

We're having a big party for him tomorrow night, mostly because I have promised all of my kids that when they turn 21, I'll take them to Las Vegas & get them drunk, but Garrett wasn't here last September & I don't have the money for Vegas now, so this will have to do. I'm seriously thinking about setting up a beer pong table & letting everyone play.

I talked to him about the party yesterday & he seems to be looking forward to it, I know all of us are. It'll be a fun couple of weeks, having them around!

Ideas

I think that when I do move into my parents' home (many, many years from now!) I'd love to turn their Great Room into a multi-media area. I plan to get a flat screen TV & they have a perfect place to hang one in there. I'd change the seating arrangement that they have in there now & get some nice home theater lighting, and a good sound system. Maybe I'd actually watch more movies that way. I probably wouldn't, but it'd still be great for watching TV, at any rate & Troy would enjoy the movie-watching.

I think I'd turn the other half of the room into an office, for our computers, that way, we could actually be in the same room for a change. That would be quite the concept, right there, it's been so long since we have, I'm not sure how I'd act. Anyway, all of this dreaming isn't helping my house hungriness, maybe I should just keep focusign on getting my bedroom clean, huh?

House Hungry

Lately, and I'm not sure what it is, I've been feeling really house hungry. I have started to feel like we need to get a place of our own, even though I know that it's impossible & that there's no need. It's probably because Rhi is so excited about getting her first place, and then Melissa keeps talking about when they were looking at Wilmington real estate, back when they wanted to stay in the Carolinas & wanted space for his 5 sons.

Vicki is always looking at places and has started paying off their debt so they can buy a house, so I guess all of this talk has started to make me think I'm a loser because I don't own a house at 42. I know I'm not, and I know that I'll have my own home eventually & I'm not in a hurry. I'll be inheriting my parents' home when they pass, and I know that every improvement they make now, is done with me in mind. It touches my heart and at the same time, makes me very sad to think of them being gone.

I think I'd move to another rental if I could find one that would let me keep Tiny & the cats, since we definitely don't need a 3 bedroom house anymore. A one or two bedroom would be fine at this point, really, especially with a nice, fenced backyard for the dog.

Dreamy Weirdness

I took a nice nap awhile ago & had the oddest dream. I was in this huge, Victorian mansion, that seemed very familiar to me. That means it's probably in Pueblo & I've very likely seen the outside a million times, and maybe the inside, but don't remember it. Anyhow, for some reason, I was not only inside this beautiful house, I was working there.

It was either some sort of assisted living facility or a sanitarium or something, but there were stair lifts on either end of the building, on the beautiful, sweeping staircases. They looked like they had been there awhile, but hadn't been used in a long time, you know? I kept hearing some very loud & heartfelt sobbing followed a few minutes later by shrieks of laughter & I wanted to go up the stairs to find out what was wrong, but I couldn't get the stair lifts to work & for some reason, walking up the stairs wasn't allowed.

In the dream, I battled with myself over the rules and my ethics and finally ran up the stairs and the entire building was empty, dusty and in a state of disrepair. Then my phone rang & I woke up. I was a little chalked off, because I didn't want the dream to end, it was like a fascinating puzzle that I won't be able to solve now!

Happy (Belated) Mother's Day!

I had an especially nice Mother's Day. It was a wonderful change to have Troy home all day, instead of working. I got up fairly late, puttered around in the living room awhile & then the kids got up & we talked, laughed & watched TV together for awhile. I woke Troy up about 30 minutes before we needed to leave for my mom's house & everyone got ready to go.

We went out there & had to wait for my brother & niece to arrive because they were waiting until my sis in law left for work (she's looking really great these days, so much better than she did before the weight loss pills). They got there & mom & I finished dinner up and got it all on the table for everyone. Don't worry, it wasn't a huge, complicated meal, it was just frozen lasagna, garlic bread, salad & vegetables with a nice bakery cake for dessert. No one worked particularly hard on anything and it was all just perfect.

All of the kids spent time riding my dad's ATV and wandering around the property and then mine each took naps for awhile. My grandmother was having a pretty bad day, but we all got through it with a little humor, as always. After we got home, my niece called & wanted to come over for awhile, so I went & got her at about 6 & she stayed until 8. At around 8:30, we headed over to Dawn's for gaming & came home at 12:30 or so. All in all, a really nice day!

Some People.

Why do certain people have to make everything so official and difficult that it gets in the way of being a nice person? I belong to several dolling forums, and I try to participate as often as possible. i lost my login information to one of them & wasn't able to login for a whole month. By the time I was I had this mystery donation in my inbox & so I messaged the person who sent it to me & asked if that meant I could use it in my signature. Instead of taking a couple of seconds to say either yes or no, she gave me a response that took more time, to tell me I needed to ask the question in a specific forum.

Now, it wasn't as if I was asking her to provide me with recommendations for a good domain host, or a list of life insurance quotes, or even for her opinion on world politics. I was asking about something she sent to me. Now I've decided that I don't even care what the answer would have been, because I wouldn't ever display something in my signature that was made by someone that rude, you know?

Everybody's Workin' for the Weekend

Not really, but I am looking forward to it. Friday is payday, which means bill-paying & grocery shopping. I'm also taking my niece, Jaycie, shopping for fabric & pattern for a renaissance faire outfit. Saturday me & the girls (meaning Dawn, Vicki & Melissa) are doing a pampering day together as a Mother's Day gift to ourselves, Rhi has a birthday party that afternoon, a date with a friend after that (it's a girl friend) and then they're going to their Graduation Dance. I'm probably going to Dawn's house that night, because, well, that's what I do.

I plan to call Sarah & Mark at some point to see if there's a drum circle this weekend & if they've had any luck looking for affordable baby cribs or if her mom got them one. I saw one on FreeCycle the other day, and if they don't have one, I'll get in touch with those folks.

Sunday, we're going to my mom's house for dinner & hopefully we'll be gaming that night, or at the very least, getting together for awhile. Garrett will be here on the 17th & I'm really excited for that, I've missed him so much over the past two years & can't wait to see him!

It Must be Spring!

It's really coming down out there right now, so much that my ceiling is leaking in several places. Fun times. I guess as long as it's leaking, it isn't filling up with water & getting ready to collapse, as it's done a few times in the past, huh?

Erin made it home at about 1pm. They had quite a layover in Las Vegas, as there wasn't enough room on the bus when it was time for them to leave. He was pretty tired, but not tired of his life on the road. He plans to hop trains at the end of the month & head east. *Sigh* It just never ends, does it? I'm going to spend the next few years worrying about him & wishing he'd settle down.

My mom called earlier, to get a phone number from me & I asked how her day was going. She kind of hesitated, which usually tells me it's a bad day with my grandma. It was, and it's so hard to see her this way, all of my life she was this strong, bossy woman, who prided herself in being the posture corrector of the family, along with the morals police, and now she doesn't know who any of us are or when we are most days. It's very sad.

Rhi's birthday was low-key, but nice. She went to reapply for a job she had to wait for until today, and she secured an interview for tomorrow afternoon. After that we met Dawn, Jason, Justin, Morgan, Roger & the baby at Chili's for dinner. Erin had wanted to go along, but he was so exhausted, he fell asleep in my craft room & didn't want to get up. After we got home, she went out for awhile with her friend Sean. She just got home & seemed happy, I hope she had fun.

Hoping for the Best

I've been spending incredible amounts of time painting signs to sell in my renaissance faire booth and I'm really hoping that people will like them & want to buy some. The onet hing I hate about running that type of booth is that you never know what people are going to want from one year to the next. There isn't any type of market research for this kind of thing & I can't even base it on what sold last year. We did that. Two years ago, bath salt sold like crazy, so I made tons of it.. it didn't sell last year, soap did.

It's crazy, frustrating and exhilarating all at the same time, so all I can do is be hopeful about them, knowing that I'd buy them if I saw them for sale.

Spring Cleaning

Troy & I got a lot done on the house this week, I guess it could be called "spring cleaning," I think it was more that I was just getting sick of the way the house was. We got the kitchen & the living room cleaned up, swept/vacuumed & mopped (in the case of the kitchen) and everything smells a heck of a lot better now. I plan to get one of those microfiber mops, so I can keep on top of the kitchen.

I imagine there will be less clutter & fewer things out of place when Rhi moves out, mostly due to there being one less person in the house. I'm hoping that Erin isn't thinking he'll be moving in here when she moves out, because I'm ready for it to just be Troy & I. As much as I love my kids, I'm tired oft he drama & need to be away from it for awhile.

Erin will be back in town today at some point, at least that's what he told me yesterday. That's a good thing, he can make up to Rhi for taking off by spending time with her, since it's her birthday today & all.

Fun Stuff

One thing I forgot to mention, is that along with our weekly role-playing sessions with our friends (that's not as risque as it sounds, I mean games, like Dungeons & Dragons) we have started to get together at least one other night of the weekend to play board or video games, too. It's been a lot of fun and really makes the weekends seem to last longer.

This Sunday night we played Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture edition, with the DVD. The guys played against us girls & baet us, of course. They didn't do it by a lot, because we had an amazing run of correct answers there towards the end. Next time, we plan to play Cranium, since Blake & Melissa have never played it & it's a really great group game.

Moving Right Along

I've accomplished quite a bit this week, some of it with Troy's help. He & I managed to get our spring cleaning pretty much finished between Sunday & today. I need to start on the bedroom now & then I'll be done. I helped my mom plan our Mother's Day dinner, had a faire meeting, where we got a lot figured out, at least as far as scheduling goes.

I bought ink for our printers & got Rhi's grad party invitations printed & she handed them out, along with extra announcements, so she could invite friends to her graduation. My sister-in-law & I finished up our planning for the party - she has a daughter graduating, too - and it should be very nice for the girls & fun for everyone.

We got all of our first of the month bills paid yesterday & a couple of plaques sent out, too, so we're good to go until payday, at any rate. Erin called me yesterday & someone he was traveling with got sick or something and their headed back home. I just hope he makes it in time to see his brother & watch his sister graduate.

Updates

Erin left Tuesday for Portland, with 2 of his friends. They think they're on the run from the police, but from what they told me, none of them were actually in trouble and certainly didn't need to run like that. I guess if it makes it more exciting, or justifies it to him, then it's okay. The reason that I'm angry about it is because he promised me he'd stay until after Rhi's graduation. My oldest son, Garrett, is coming out here on the 17th & really wanted to see his little brother, and Rhi really wanted both of her brothers to be a part of her big day. He also told Rhi he was going to hang out with her the day he left & had even said, after he told me he was leaving, that he still intended to. He never did & that really hurt her feelings. He called me Wednesday from Newport Beach, so apparently, they're taking the long way there, which I guess is alright if you have money to burn.

In other stuff, I've been thinking about saving up for a Lasik procedure. Have any of you had it done? Is it terribly expensive? How about the pain, is it really bad & if so, was it worth it in the long run? I'm just so tired of glasses & contacts, I'd love to not have to mess around with that stuff every day of my life.