Tuesday, December 27, 2011

in which I lose my skirt in a parking lot

We had something special for Church on Sunday, so instead of going to our usual place Sunday morning, we met in a large hall with a lot of people from churches from the surrounding area. Anyway, during the lunch break, Angel #2 and I headed out to the parking lot to put our lunch leftovers back into the car and as we were coming back inside, I realized that it wasn't the seam from one of the skirts tiers that was rubbing against my thighs, but it was, in fact, the waistband. The elastic in the waistband had been slowly giving way, but it decided to give up the ghost entirely on Sunday afternoon, in a parking lot. Since I don't carry around one of those huge mom purse's that contain everything but the kitchen sink (though the bathroom sink IS there) I didn't have a safety pin and spent the rest of the afternoon hoiking my skirt up. Yes, I find it difficult to even go to church like a normal person.

We got a phone call from Angel #1 on Friday. It was great hearing his voice and, now that he's got a sort of military international go-phone, it's nice to know that we'll be able to talk to him occasionally while he's out there. He told me what he's missing out there and I'm in the process of putting together a care package for him full of beef jerky and peanut butter.

And now, in other breaking news. Angel #1 won't be my only international Angel. Angel #2 has decided to take a Spanish immersion course followed by a one month internship at a ranch in Uruguay. She's brushing up on her Spanish and is deciding what to pack so she's ready to head out on January 20th, a few days after her 18th birthday. I'm so excited for her and I'm sure she's going to have an awesome time down there. If she really likes it, she's considering staying down there, we'll see what happens I guess. It's always something.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Where did the time go?

First off, I want to thank you for your kind words, Jeannie, it's a little overwhelming if I think of my little boy in such a scary place, so I try not to think about it. Then, when I do think about it and start to feel helpless, I just think of those poor mothers who live there and are trying to raise their children in such horrible circumstances and it puts everything else into perspective.

On a cheerier note, I've been really painting up a storm lately. It all started a couple weeks ago when I decided that I'd been avoiding painting my kitchen long enough. I had intended to just do the trim on the walls, so I took out my 1 1/2 inch brush and got to work. Well, one thing led to another and I just kept going until I'd painted all my kitchen walls with that tiny little brush. It's now an awesome shade of turquoise. Well, after my walls looked so cool, my gross cabinets looked worse than ever. We'd taken the doors off the upper cabinets before we moved in because the previous owners had removed the ceiling and only replaced half of it before giving up. We took out the cabinets, ripped out the nasty looking boards they were putting up for the ceiling and got as far as hanging 2 sheets of drywall up. We put them on the north side of the room so we could replace the cabinets there, but never got around to putting the doors back, figuring it would be easier to paint them if they were off. BUT, I'd been avoiding the whole painting thing, so I had ugly yellow, doorless cabinets since July. Well, that's changed now. I sanded them down and put primer and 2 coats of paint on over the course of 3 days. By then, I was sick of painting for awhile, so only the upper cabinets got finished, the lower ones are still yellow while the uppers are this great shade of dark melony orangey-pink (salmon??). I retired from the painting business for a bit, but then hubs and I went to the REStore on Saturday. The REStore has got to be my new favorite place to shop. Saturday was 50% off day. We got upper cabinets for the laundry room, more linear feet than what I've currently got in my melony orangey-pink kitchen cabinets, all for under $20. Before we could hang them up though, I needed to get the laundry room painted. Someone who lived here at one time a long time ago, really loved the color pink, it looked like Pepto Bismol exploded in my laundry room. NOT attractive. I searched through my collection of random paint that's piled up in my basement. I found white for the ceiling and trim and a sage green color for the walls. It looks great, but after painting the room from top to bottom, then helping hubs hang the cabinets, I was pretty pooped out. Today, I put contact paper on the shelves and put all the laundry room stuff that had been sitting in boxes since we moved in onto their very own shelves. Old houses are cool, but they sure are short on storage space. But slowly my little castle is catching up to the 20th century (getting it up to the 21st is waaay beyond its capabilities).

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

grrrr

Just an FYI for the world's enlightenment: 1. Turn your phone off when you go to a concert. 2. If you don't turn off your phone, put it on vibrate or silent mode. 3. If you don't do the first two, if someone calls you during the concert, turn off the ringer and don't answer. 4. If you feel you have to answer, quietly say you're busy and you'll call back, don't say "what's up??" 5. If you're a complete idiot and do none of the above, the LEAST you could do is not visit during MY KID'S SOLO!!! Some people should be shot. /rant

Besides idiots on cell phones sitting behind me, Angel #4's concert was wonderful. Since she's on the list of what Angel #2 called The Overachievers, she got a lot of stage time, being in the band, the tonechimes group and the choir, where she had a small solo, we got to see a lot of her.

Angel #1 is currently in Kurdistan, at least he was the last we heard from him. Now that he's out of the country, he's no longer using his cell phone and he doesn't have a computer with him, so we'll just have to assume he's where he's supposed to be. He's using someone's phone to update on Facebook, which is why I know he was in Kurdistan yesterday. He called on Sunday, right before he left the States. He told us he was sitting on the runway, so we assumed he was talking to us from the plane. We didn't know why he could be on the phone during take-off, but figured he was on a military transport or something. Until a half hour later he was still talking. Turns out he was literally SITTING ON THE RUNWAY with his platoon waiting to get on a plane. #1 isn't a particularly chatty guy, so he didn't see the need to explain himself further.

Thanks for your encouraging words, Tanya. About the crying thing, you'd be surprised how tough you can be when you've got to be. I figured my crying would make things harder for him, so I sucked it up, you do what you've got to do. Now, we begin the countdown to when he comes back home. Seven months and counting!!