Will You Be My Valentine.....Early

After all of these years of parenting, my kids know me well.  This year Valentine's Day was on a Tuesday.  We all the stuff going on with work, building the house, helping my in-laws...I really hadn't given it much thought.  We make one trip to Walmart a week to buy groceries and it's usually on a Saturday or Sunday.  All special requests for the week should be put on "the list".  They know this.

Well Wednesday Feb 8th, Carlie comes up to me and says "Mom, my teacher told us today that we have to have our Valentines purchased and brought to school by Friday."  My first thought was "Crud, that's really short notice.  I'm going to have to make a special trip to Walmart because she (either Carlie or her teacher) didn't give me enough notice. 

Then I started to think about it.  "Carlie, Valentine's Day isn't until Tuesday.  Why do we have to have your Valentines to school by the Friday before?"  Carlie gives me a dead-pan innocent expression "I dunno.  That's just what she said."

I know there isn't something not quite right about this, but it's not clicking in my brain.  I'm still muttering to myself about having to make a mid-week trip to Walmart.  Then the tumblers click in my stressed out over worked brain.  Ahhhh.....

"Carlie, that's not logical.  Did your teacher REALLY say you had to have them by Friday?  Because you know I can email her and ask?"  Carlie replies "Wellllll, techincally that's not what she said.  But I thought if I gave you an earlier deadline....that would make sure that I had them on time for Valentine's Day!!!"

She knows me too well!!!

Professional Donkey Trainers

This post is about my donkey, but it's also about friendship.  How am I going to talk about donkeys and friendship in one post....

There are alot of people I know, alot of people I like....but there are only a few oustide of my family that I hold close to my heart as a friend.  Margie falls into that category.

Margie and I met about 12 years ago when we worked together at Williams Energy.  Niether one of us are girly, girls, we didn't have much time to spend together outside of our work day, and we were both crazy about our kids.  We were Tom Boys and Athletes.  She was the Matron of Honor at my wedding. 

One of my favorite things about Margie is that we have always had this unspoken rule that we could brag all we wanted to each other about our kids.  We would never compare our kids, never be jealous of each others kids.  We shared our kids with each other: their successes, their failures, their funny stories....and the other would listen.

The other thing about our friendship that is special is that it has survived both time and distance.  Margie and I have lived in different states for over six years now.  We've only managed to see each other in person a handful of times in those last six years.

So a few weekends ago, she got to come up here and visit.  I was excited, but I was kind of nervous too.  We hadn't seen each other in several years and both of our lives had changed alot since then.  She got out of the truck and it was like we had never been apart.

"A true friend is one who picks up right where you left off, whether it's been a week, a month, or twenty years." -Henry Miller
What did we do on our day together?  Exactly the things that have always defined our friendship.  She went to a basketball game with me and we watched my little girls play. We had lunch together at a great resteraunt. We talked and talked about our kids.  And we TRAINED MY DONKEY!!!!

It's been a long time since I've had as much fun as I did that day teaching Lizzy to lead.  Oh, and Marige.  I found one of your gloves in the bottom of the donkey's water pan the other day....in case you've been looking for it!!!

Who has the best er......arse?  Me, Margie or Lizzy?
 

Does it have The HydroPhobee?

In case you haven’t seen the movie Old Yeller, that’s what they used to call Rabies.

Yesterday
, I was the last one in the family to leave the house.  I walk out the back door headed to the mini-van, and there is a raccoon sitting in my driveway.  I stared at it and it stared back at me.  Then it slowly started walking away weaving back and forth.   

The first thing that popped into my head was “OMG it has the beginning stages of Rabies.  Which of my animals are current on their rabies shots?  Which of my kids are current on THEIR rabies shots…oh wait, kids don’t have Rabies shots.  Oh CRAP kids don’t have Rabies shots!!!”

So I’m standing there in the yard frozen with indecision.  We don’t own a firearm, for reasons we’ll discuss some other time.  Who around me has a gun and is willing to shoot?  Everybody has already left for work.  So I’m looking up the number for animal control on my phone with one eye, and keeping the other on the potentially rabid coon.  It is hard to use a Blackberry with just one eye. 

As I’m fumbling around with my phone, I see my neighbor leave his driveway.  Ohhhhhh…he is a wildlife officer out at the lake!!!  I run to the road and flag him down…which probably scared him to death.  He gets out of his truck.  He looks at it for a minute and says “Wellllll it COULD have rabies.”  NOT makin' me feel any better here Alan!!  We watch it a few more minutes and then we see that it has a broken back leg.  Still no one around with a gun to put it out of its misery.  Alan says it will probably wander off during the day.

I’d really forgotten about it.  The girls had practice at 5:30pm.  In order for us to make it on time, I have to fly home and they have to be in basketball clothes ready to go.  So I pull up in the driveway and no one is in sight.  THEN I heard the screaming. Madi is running from the back five acres bawling hysterically.  Frank is right behind her with Scrappy in his arms, and the other two girls are hot on their heels.  I could not IMAGINE what was going on. 

Madi reaches me first and she says “Mom, it’s leg is broken.  Frank broke its leg.”  I see Frank running with Scrappy and all I can think is “OMG, Frank broke Scrappy’s other leg!!!!”

Frank finally catches up.  Madi is continuing “There is a raccoon back there and Frank is beating it with a stick.  And he beat it so much he broke its leg.  He’s trying to kill it.”  At the same time Frank is saying “Mom, Scrappy was attacking it and they were fighting and I couldn’t get Scrappy to stop so I only hit it with the stick once so I could get Scrappy.” Carlie adds in “I think Scrappy is bleeding.”  (Which he wasn’t.)  Inwardly I grown. “Ohhhhh…..the coon.” 

So I walk out to the field and the poor old coon is curled up in the middle of the pasture miserable.  It made me want to cry to think about shooting it, but there probably wasn’t anything that could be done for it either.

So I walk back to the new house.  There were three different groups of construction guys in the house working.  I walk into the house and say “Does anybody here have a gun in their truck?”  Boy THAT got a lot of wide eyes.  And then I think Duh!!! And explain about the raccoon.  None of them have a gun (that will admit to it anyway).

So a couple of minutes later the builder pulls in.  I say “I have a dumb question.  Do you happen to have a gun with you?”  He looks at me and says “No, I only carry a gun in my truck on Mondays.”  NO ONE is helping me here!!!  He goes “If it wasn’t something as mean as a raccoon, I’d go out there and hit it in the head with a 2x4 for you, but those things bite hard.  I look over at Frank and he says “I’ll go do it.”  Uhhh…no you won’t!!!

I left it out there in the field.  I didn’t go check on it this morning.  Hopefully it’s not still out there suffering.  I thought briefly…ever so briefly about opening up a raccoon rehabilitation center on our land.  I felt so badly for it.

911….What’s the Nature of Your Emergency

We got all the kids their own cell phones for Christmas.  I had them really locked down so that they could only make and receive calls from certain people.  Frank had been doing so well for almost a year.  His counselor even released him from counseling stating that he thought Frank was doing great.

About six weeks ago, he started ramping things up.  I know being a 13 year old boy is hard, but this was getting a little ridiculous. 

We were all incredibly stressed out because of all the things going on in our family.  One day Bob and Frank were working on building a wheel chair ramp to our trailer house so that they could get Memaw in and out of the house.  Bob snapped at Frank for not listening.  I am at work and I start getting texts from my son.  He says that Dad was mean to him, kicked him out of the house….and he’s walking down the black top road towards the highway.  I told him to go home, and he texted back that he wouldn’t go home that he was afraid that Bob would hurt him (whatever).  So I called Bob and told him what Frank was texting me.  I said “You’d better go get him….he’s not very stable.”   Pepaw was going into town, so Bob told him to pick Frank up on the way out.  Pepaw came up next to him in his truck and Frank refused to get in the truck with him.  So Pepaw left him.   Next Bob tried to go get him.  He pulled up in the truck and when Frank saw him coming he ran off into the pasture into the cedar trees.  So Frank starts texting me “I won’t going home with Dad.  I’m afraid of him.  He’ll hurt me.”  Bob is texting me “I’m trying to get Frank, he’s running away, I can see him behind a cedar tree out in the field.”  Frank texts to me “I’m not going to go with him no matter what he says.”  And so on and so on.  Well Frank finally went back to the trailer and they talked it out.

A few weeks went by and Frank was getting more and more irritable.  Everything we did got on his nerves and he yelled at everybody.  One night he came totally unglued.  Bob was there, and Bob got him in a bear hug and laid him down across our bed.  Frank screamed curse words at him.  Said he hated us, he hated his sisters, his life was horrible, nobody loved him, he wanted to live somewhere else anywhere else, he didn’t care if it was a boys’ home, he was getting a job and moving out, we only adopted him for the monthly stipend  (whatever), he was leaving right then and there in the dark with only his shirt and shorts on, we beat him, his life was horrible.  The curse words that came out of his mouth were almost impressive.   During that go around, Frank had head-butted Bob and smashed his lips and nose.  At one point he yelled at Bob “I’m going to call 911 and get your ass thrown in JAIL.”  Do you see where this is going?????

We had several more minor incidents.  One day he got mad at me, and I made him go outside away from everybody.  I went back into the trailer house.  And when I left the room, Pepaw and Carrie heard glass shatter and Pepaw though he saw a shadow go towards the window.  Well there was only one person outside at the time and his name started with an F.  Bob came in late that night, so he didn’t know anything about it.

When he came home from work the next evening, he saw the glass.  He said simply “How did the window get broken?”  Frank went ballistic “I didn’t do anything.  I didn’t break it.  Everybody blames everything on ME.”  Bob was trying to take the girls to basketball practice.  Frank kept getting in his face.  Finally Bob pushed him down onto the couch to get him to quit.  I went out to the new house to see what had been done that day.  Bob took the girls to practice.  We thought it was a done deal.

Well about ten minutes later Bob calls me and says he got a text on his phone that someone on our cell phone plan had called 911.  He said “Did you call?”  I said “No and all the kids are with you?”  He said “Frank’s not with me.”  Oh, Crap!!!

When I had gone out to the new house and Bob had left to take the girls, Frank had run off into the woods in the night and called 911 and told them that we abused him.

So about 10 minutes later a Sheriff’s cruiser pulls up to our yard with Frank in the front seat.  A second deputy arrives at the house.  Bob comes home from practice. They take a statement from Bob, Frank and me.   They ask Pepaw and Carrie what they had heard and seen.

The deputy (bless his heart) told Frank that he didn’t see a mark on him nor any marks on anyone else in the family.  He chewed him out up one side and down the other.  He made a big show of giving me his number and told me that any time Frank acted up when Bob wasn’t there to give him a call.

Frank was a perfect angel for the next few weeks.  It sure wasn’t funny at the time.  But I hope ten years from now we’ll look back on this and we’ll laugh about the time Frank called 911 on us.

The Pool Sisters....Ballin'

Were playin Bask-et-ballll, were playin' Bask-et-balllll.....

Sassy's Babies



We woke up on Feb 1st to discover that our Siamese cat, Sassy, had given birth to five squirmy white kittens. They get their coloring as they get older. She gave birth to them in my nice white turkey serving platter that was stored in the bottom of a cabinet....yes I did wash it thoroughly after I moved the kittens to a nice warm box.



When they were a couple of days old, Frank called me at work. He's all frantic and he says "Mom, Mom. Guess what Sassy has done!!!" I thought OMG has she eaten a kitten or sat on one or something.

He said "She MOVED the kittens out of the box. She moved them behind the litter box all in a line!!!!" Should I put them back in the box?" I told him to leave them alone. It's not unusual for Momma cats to move their kittens. And she probably moved them because she thought we were bothering them too much.  I forget sometimes that my kids haven't been exposed to things like Momma cats and baby kittens.

Siamese cats actually have a form of Albanism. They have an enzyme that will not produce melantonin at body temperature. However in the cooler parts of the body, the fur darkens. That's why they have color on their feet, tails and ears....the cooler parts of the body. The reason they have black on their face is because the sinus/nasal cavities make the face cooler. Siamese cats in Northern climates will generally be darker than those in Southern climates. And as a cat ages he/she will also darken. This albanism gene is also what causes their eyes to be blue.



Granny, What Big Ear Phones You Have.....

On Christmas Eve we went to Oklahoma and had a great Christmas with the Osborn family.  We gathered at my Uncle's Church.  My awesome Mom (Granny) has decided to train to become and EMT so she can help keep the ambulance service going in their small town. This isn't an easy thing to achieve, it takes 9 months and you have to take alot of hard tests.

Well my sister, JoLynn, bought my Mom and EMT kit for Christmas.  Granny got it out at the Osborn Family Christmas.  She was practicing on everyone, taking blood pressures and listening to hearts and lungs.  She got Madi stretched out on one of the tables and began "working on her".  Madi being the drama queen she is was playing at patient with a dramatic flare.

Well Libby comes along and starts pawing through all the pockets of Granny's red EMT bag.  I told her to quit that everything belonged in a spot and she would mess it all up.  She picked up Granny's stethoscope, put it in her ears and said......."Wow Granny, these are some really big ear phones you've got!!!"  She was dead serious.  I wanted to ask her if she thought that little round thing at the end was the newest Ipod. LOL.

Reflection on 2011

I didn't post anything for the whole month of January.  No I didn't abandon my blog.  It's just been even crazier than usual around here.  I went to my first Physical Therapist appointment last week (that's a whole post on its own).  And as he was look at my back issue he asked what was going on in my life......well let's see.

In January I was just getting settled in at my new job at Via Christi.

• On January 28th, Lena's baby Amira was born and I got to be there for her birth.  That same night, we found out that my 55 year old Aunt Marsha had passed away. 
• In February we moved in to the 3 bedroom 2 bathroom trailer house permanently because we got tired of running around like crazy people trying to clean up our house in town every time they had a showing.  We thought it was only going to be for a few months.
• Late in February, I took Libby by myself to a basketball tournament in Ark City.  Between games I ran her to a department store and had a major grand mal seizure (never had one before) and was transported by ambulance to the hospital.
• In May my Memaw went to the funeral of her first husband in Indiana.  While there she had a massive stroke.  They transported her to a major hospital. We weren't sure if she was going to make it.
• As a family, we decided that my Memaw and Pepaw didn't have access to the health care they would need on their rural farm. So we started working on getting her moved to Wichita.  We could not find a way to transport her.
• Finally in June she was well enough to ride in a car, and my Sister-In-Law and Pepaw drove her (while she was on a matress in the back of their mini-van) all the way to Kansas and we got her into a Rehab Facility.  Carrie (my Sister-in-law) decided to stay in Wichita to help take care of Memaw.
• Pepaw brought his large RV up from Oklahoma and parked it on our land, and he and Carrie lived there while Memaw was in Rehab.
• Lena totalled her car in July.  She had to wait on insurance money before she could get another one, so she and Amira rode the bus to her school and baby sitter until she could get another one.  And we also helped pick her up and get her places.  She stayed with us alot that month that she didn't have a car.
• In August, both Frank and Libby were in Junior High.  And Bob started his first year as our head football coach.  He wanted to make a good impression so he was immersed in football.
• The first week in August I took the kids to get School Supplies at Walmart and had my second grand mal seizure and during the seizure was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher which gashed my head open and required six stitches and twelve staples and caused a concussion.  I had to have an MRI and was officially diagnosed with Epilespy.  I couldn't drive for 2 months, and had to carpool with my friend Sarah who blessedly lives a few houses down and works nearby the place I was working.  It SUCKS not being able to drive BTW. 
• Our whole routine also changed as Madi and Carlie went to their new grade school and the kids began riding the bus for the first time.  Frank was playing football, Bob was coaching football, Libby was playing volleyball.  I couldn't drive anyone anywhere.  And I was terrified that I would have another seizure.
• Dec 7th we found out that Memaw had to leave the Rehab facility THAT DAY.  We had no place to put her.  They were working on selling their farm in Oklahoma, but it wasn't done yet. They couldn't buy a house here in Wichita until their house was sold.  So we rented a hospital bed and moved Memaw into our living room.  Along with a lift, port-a-potty, wheel chair, etc.
• Then we had Thanksgiving and Christmas sandwiched in there.
• Then Dec 30th, we learned that their house in Oklahoma was finally going to close on Jan 7th.  So we rented a UHaul and went down there to pack up and move 30 years of house stuff and farm stuff.

So through noboy's fault....just that crazy thing called life....in the month of January we ended up with five adults (one of whom was in a wheel chair), four kids, three dogs (two mine and one theirs), three cats (Carrie is allergic to them BTW) living in a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom trailer house.

Oh, and did I mention that we were also building a house during that month, Madi and Carlie were playing Rec Basketball on Saturdays, Frank was wrestling at the Jr High, and Libby was on the Varsity Basketball team for Junior High.  Oh and Frank also call 911 on us...but that's another post too.

So that brings me back to why I went to see a Physical Therapist.  I hurt my back while we were doing all that moving and it wouldn't heal up.   So when the PT asked me what was going on in my life, I started rattling all this stuff off.  He looks at me with his mouth hanging open and goes "Well, you've got a few things on your plate!"  A Yep!!!!

The Phantom of the Opera - The Next Generation

I've been a hugh Phantom of the Opera fan since I was a teen. I've seen it live on stage a couple of times, loved the movie. Well yesterday I bought the 25th anniversary concert version on DVD. It is a live filming of a concert stage performance. Because of the location and the filming, it's not quite a complete stage set. But if you are a fan you've got to get a copy.

I've always been an u...nderdog fan so I would always cheer for the lonely Phantom. Carlie wanted to watch the DVD with me last night. So we watched it together in the dark. Now I must admit that Raul was drop dead gorgeous....but Carlie was immediately crazy about him. She told me he looked JUST LIKE Robert Pattison. Then the whole DVD she's cheering for Raul...I'm cheering for the Phantom.

Finally she goes "WHY would you even like the Phantom? He's ugly, he's very rude, and he keeps Christine transed all the time . The only reason she loves him a little bit is when he's got her transed."

Ahhhh my pragmatic daughter. I hope she marries a Raul someday!