vacation all I ever wanted
It killed me for most of the summer to not talk about our vacation here! Now that it’s over I finally can! I didn’t ever mention it because I felt weird about too many people knowing I was leaving the house for 10 days. We’ve had a lot of break-ins in our town and I didn’t want us being away to be too obvious.
Sooooo, we went to Florida, on the hottest week of the year. Yep.
I really don’t like heat, but I got over myself and had 10 days of fabulous! We tried to do fun things every morning and spend the afternoons in the pool, (at least, Josh and I did, while Damon worked.) Only one day out of the whole trip was too thunderstormy to swim. As long as I can get in the water I’m happy. ;)
We went because Damon has a new job, where he will mostly be working from home, but one week a month he will be in the office in, you guessed it, Florida. Josh and I got a chance to tag along to St. Petersburg this time since we had a free place to stay and school hasn’t started here yet.
Okay, I’ve bored you enough with the words, here is our trip in pictures! (For all three of you that actually want to see them!)
Man, those pelicans stunk!
The beach!!
St. Pete Beach was absolutely gorgeous. Next time we go, we’re spending more time there.
We don’t have trees like this in New Hampshire!
An armadillo made out of junk car parts? This is one of Josh’s favorite pics!
We should have seen an alligator right here, but it was even too hot for them. Ugh, the sweat.
After Damon’s work week was over we left St. Pete and spent a few days in Orlando.
The Lego store…need I say more?
Damon had some issues taking pics with his iphone. And he used to be a photographer??! Hee. Okay, it was just a liiiittle bit sunny out, and he couldn’t see what he was shooting. Also, the only day I didn’t wear black. Ahem. Did I mention the sweat?
The best part of the day at Magic Kingdom. Seriously. Minnie air kissed me on the cheek. So ridiculously cute.
Kennedy Space Center was my favorite day. There was lots of air conditioning…
We can’t pass up an opportunity for a Vulcan hand sign. Ever.
And really, what is a vacation without one of these?
ps. I have to give a shout out to my MIL and her husband for staying in the house part of the time and doing tons of chores for us! And another to my friend’s daughter “C” for checking in on my cat the rest of the time! Thank you!
Filed Under life, photos, the boy Tagged Florida, life, photos, vacation
50
This one is just for my parents.
Happy Anniversary! I hope your day is just what you want it to be. I love you both so much.
xoxo Annette
downsizing
Did anyone else read this article in the NY Times last week about getting rid of all of your stuff and living with very few belongings? I’m just so intrigued by this. I’ve been feeling the weight of my “things” for a long time now. I’ve started to take steps to declutter, but I think there’s a whole mindset to living simply that I would like to explore.
Recently, in preparation for that horrible yard sale, I went through 10 big plastic bins that have been stored in our basement for all of the time we’ve lived here. We literally moved them from one storage area in our last house to another storage area in this one. (And really, they were in the one before that too, they were just in cardboard then.) It was such a waste of space! (And money to move it!) It was almost all junk.
Only about one bin worth went to the yard sale, one bin was worth keeping, and the rest went into the trash. That’s so depressing, and yet it was an incredible feeling to free myself of those things. Seriously.
I’ve decided I’m taking the next year purge to myself of some more of the stuff I don’t really need. I also have too many things I’ve kept for sentimental reasons, but don’t have any use for. At what point do you rid yourself of those things? Life isn’t about what you own, is it? I don’t think I would ever go as far as the woman in the article did, but I know I need to downsize my belongings, and my life.
this is why I’m working so much this summer…*
…so I can pay for home improvements instead of attempting to do them ~badly~ myself.
Goodbye baby poop brown. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!
In about two weeks our house will be a lovely shade of, um, kinda boring beige. But fresh! And clean! With pretty brick red shutters/front door/garage door, and white trim.
We’ve suffered enough with the poopy tan for over four years. It’s taken me that long to 1) afford to hire someone to do the work, and 2) pick the darn colors!
Top=good. Bottom=bad. You all likey?
I hope so, cause I’m not changing my mind. Again.
* and also, why I’m not at BlogHer. Sigh.
parched
Every day I pull up the weather and scan the radar for a hint of green. A sign, any sign of some rain in the forecast. Nope, not today. Even the rare thunderstorms in the area have bypassed our patch of dust. So every day I go out and and fill up my watering can and try to keep my few potted veggies alive. I’ve given up on most everything else.
The grass is so crunchy you can’t walk on it barefoot for fear of puncturing your skin. The daylilies barely bloomed and I don’t think the hydrangea will at all. The black-eyed-susans actually look depressed! Despite being desert plants the hens-and-chicks are limp and the stonecrop are shriveling. Even the tall maples that get their water from deep underground are wilted and the leaves are already yellowing. We won’t have much pretty fall foliage here this year.
I planted an expensive Japanese Maple right before the drought started. Ugh. It’s still alive but hasn’t grown at all. I can only hope I’ve watered it enough to establish good roots before winter. The jury is definitely still out on my poor brown Magnolia too. I had transplanted forsythia, from the backyard to the front, but they are now dessicated twigs. I’ll probably have to plant new ones all over again next spring, darn it!
In all of June we had only two inches of rain, and in July, barely one. At least four each would have been normal.
We’ll see what August brings, more of the same 90+ degree days or a just little bit of relief? Sheesh. This is New Hampshire, if I wanted it this hot and dry I would live in Nevada or Arizona!
ps. And just because I’m one of those people that always has to look on the darn bright side of everything, here are two silver linings: there are almost no mosquitoes when normally we are inundated, and I don’t have to mow the freaking lawn.
never again!
So. The yard sale sucked in oh so many ways. Someone please kick me if I ever say I’m having a yard sale again!
It was so humid in the morning that I had to take my glasses off while we were pulling all the junk out of the garage because they kept fogging up. And then there was the sweat. I don’t like to sweat!!
I had hopes of decent traffic when people started showing up at 7:30 to shop. Except the early birds only wanted old albums. ~grumble grumble~ I don’t have any records and I wouldn’t sell them to you if I did. Harrumph.
Do you know how boring a yard sale is when no one shows up? Okay, not no one, but almost. Ugh.
Damon had nothing to do so he played with the panorama feature on his iphone. It’s weirdly accurate and yet not at all. Um, our driveway is supposed to be a straight line?
Then he cleaned the garage. Now that’s bored!
Josh was trooper. He manned his toy table until 1pm when he finally gave up and went inside to watch tv. I couldn’t blame him, I desperately wanted to go inside too, sit in front of the air conditioner, and freeze my face off!
In the end, I made $38, Josh made $21, and we still have massive piles of stuff in the garage. I refuse to bring any of it back in the house lest it never leave again. I took some things to the transfer station to the area people can pick over for free, a bag of clothes went into a Salvation Army bin, a box of books are ready for the used bookstore, and the rest of it will be donated to my favorite charity yard sale in September.
I’m close to selling a dining room table on craigslist today, which is what we should have done with everything in the first place. ~sigh~
Yard sales are so not worth the effort. Lesson learned.
most days
My days are virtually the same, hour-by-hour, sitting at my desk, searching for photos, making lunches, begging telling Josh to play outside, cleaning up cat puke, and avoiding anything resembling housework. Thankfully, most days are punctuated with little bits of humor, like watching Wipeout. I know, I know, it’s all kinds of wrong, but I can’t help it. :) And, yes, I let Josh watch it too…
Anyway, I wanted to show you a few things I typically see around here on any given day.
Look closely at the top of the photo. Yes, there is an extra cat in the picture. George is often found sleeping with toys piled on top of him.
I know I’m not the only mother in the world whose kid has extra sensory perception regarding the phone. Right? As soon as it rings, or even if I silently start to dial - he’s in the room. Talking to me. Or giving me hand gestures. Anything to get my attention. Or to listen in. Every single time! This photo? If I had saved them all I would have hundreds just like it:
Have you ever been to Passive Aggressive Notes? Well, I could have had a whole website of “I’m On The Phone Notes” if I had just planned ahead.
Lately we’ve been on a kill the clutter kick and we’ve decided to have a yard sale. A whole lot of crap is now piled in the garage:
And that’s not even all of it. Every day I put a little more in the pile, now named the Monster that Ate the Garage. We need to have that yard sale soon!
And last, but not least, is an older photo I found, taken by my husband that perfectly illustrates most of my days:
A cat that thinks he’s a person sitting on a Garfield book with Legos and crap all over the place. If a corner of a computer and a coffee cup were in the photo it would be perfect. :)
Filed Under family, humor, life, the boy, the cat Tagged life, photos, the boy, the cat
censored!
We had a fabulous day at the beach with my sisters and their families yesterday. The weather was absolutely perfect, 85 and sunny, and the water was warmer than its normal freeze your toes off temp. Perfect shark weather, but no, we didn’t see any. ;)
I gotta tell you, I had better pictures than this one, (all taken with my new-to-me iphone!) but my boy won’t let me post them. ~sigh~ This blog has been going through some growing pangs lately, because he doesn’t really want me to write about him or post pictures of him anymore. He only approved this one photo because his back was to the camera.
I’m being censored.
If we are doing anything fun or if I innocently take a photo I am often asked “you’re not gonna blog about this are you mom?” Huh. I guess not!
He and I have been here before…you may have noticed there have been several posts about him lately that didn’t really show him. A birthday post without a birthday boy, a science post without a clear face, a post about his treehouse with only one blurry image. As you can see, I’ve had to get creative with my photography. It helps that I’m not particularly good at taking pictures so blurry faces are a natural. ;)
I knew this would come eventually. I just didn’t think it would be so soon! I kind of thought I had until he was 10 or 12 before he stopped letting me write about him. In fact, if he knew I wrote this recently he wouldn’t be very happy about it. I published it because I know someday he’ll appreciate it.
I’ve always self-censored anyway, not wanting to get overly personal on something that can’t ever really be deleted, but I’ve always felt pretty free to post about his childhood. Like I own it or something! Well, he is his own person, and has the right to keep his life off the internet if that’s what he wants. I still might write about him, but only if he approves it. Future photos will be faceless, like they were back when I first started and blogged anonymously. Or there won’t be any photos of him at all. I just don’t know yet.
What happens to a mommy blogger (ugh, it’s what I’ve become but I still hate that word) who can’t blog about her kid?? I really don’t have the answer right now! It’s why I don’t post as often as I used to, and I don’t foresee it getting any better.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t depressing. It’s just different. I have to make a change. Write about my own life, or don’t write at all?
Filed Under blogging, family, life, the boy Tagged blogging about blogging, meta, the boy
milestones
Today is my 15th wedding anniversary! Fifteen years. I can’t quite wrap my brain around that. It went by much quicker than it sounds. We still like each other. And we both still have all of our hair and teeth. I consider that a success. ;)
This is actually one of the only anniversaries we’ve had that both of us remembered it ahead of time. Usually at least one of us, and on occasion both of us, have forgotten it. One year we got an anniversary card in the mail from my MIL and we both went: huh, our anniversary must be coming up. Except it was that day and we didn’t figure it out until the next day. Duh.
I think anniversaries aren’t that big of a deal to us, because really, it’s every day that’s important, and we both know it.
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This weekend is also my 20th High School Reunion. Yikes! Now that makes me feel old.
We’re having it at a HoJos. No, really.
This is the first time I’ve been able to go to a class reunion. Funny thing, our 5th reunion was the same day I got married. I remember thinking at the time what a great excuse that was not to have to go! For our 10th and 15th I was living in Virginia and couldn’t travel back for them. So I literally haven’t seen most of these people in 20 years.
Other than their Facebook profile pics I have no idea what to expect. And we all know FB pics lie. They’re all photoshopped to make everyone look younger and skinnier than they really are. Except mine. Of course.
holding on
His hand has always fit into mine perfectly. For years now my response to standing next to him is to hold out my hand. His response was always to take it. There is safety in holding hands, comfort, and silent communication.
This spring has shifted that, ever so slightly. His instinct to reach out hasn’t changed but more often than not instantly pulls back, then glances around in case anyone saw him. Apparently seven is too old to hold hands with your mom, at least if your friends might be around.
Sometimes, even in the school parking lot, he forgets to pull away, and his fingers press lightly against my palm. I don’t remind him, and I can’t help but grin.
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I was sitting in a rocking chair a couple of days ago, sewing a Toy Story pillowcase for his bed. He had just picked out a few yards of fleece for a new blanket and there was enough for a pillow too. Suddenly, he looked at me and asked if I could work on that later; he wanted to sit in my lap. He snuggled in, as best he could do with those long legs, and let me rock. Never say no to a seven year old boy who wants to sit in your lap, it just might be the last time he ever asks.
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He lost another tooth at school yesterday. He wanted to keep it a secret, I’m assuming so he could test the tooth fairy, but he couldn’t contain himself and told me within minutes of getting off the bus. The tooth fairy left a dollar last night, more than expected. He told me this morning that it must be because he’s such good kid. Yes, yes that’s exactly right.
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Tomorrow is his last day of first grade. It’s move-up-day, when he finds out who his new teacher will be, who the other kids in his class are. His excitement is palpable. As much as he will his enjoy his summer vacation, he would be just as happy to start second grade on Monday.
I’m glad we have the summer together though, to read books and play legos. Because I once he’s in second grade, I doubt he will still believe in the tooth fairy, or sit in my lap, or forget himself and reach out to hold my hand anymore.