Just some pic-a-tures

Robbie, Samantha and Katie at the local state park

See the little bug on the petal?

Me Tarzan....


You Jane!

It doesn't seem to be showing well here but you could see the clouds reflecting in the water that day. Sort of a Monet feeling going on!

I wanted to tweak this one but the editing software that came with the camera is limited but that was one humongous spider web!!!

Sweet, sweet bliss!

Today, for the first time since the end of May, I am completely alone in the house! Well, with the exception of Belle, Daisy and Lucky but they're all fairly quiet housemates! I am fighting another stupid barometer headache but it's tolerable since it's quiet! The sad thing is I have less than 30 mintues until the first one is due home! I love my family but it's so true that absence makes the heart grow fonder sometimes, especially after a crappy summer! lol

I talked to Mary for an hour today and while talking to her the mailman brought me the cardstock I ordered from Rocky Mountain Hobbies. Absolutely wuuuuuuuuuunerful hour!!! Archiver's was out of all the cardstock that the Bazzill matchmaker said matches the Cosmo Cricket Girl Friday line. I found maybe half of it online at RMH but they were out of colors too. What gives? Inspiration struck everyone at once?! Oh well, I also ordered some clearanced paper from RMH too to make it "worth the shipping costs". ;-) And surprisingly it was only a few sheets! Showing restraint in my old age!

Tuesday we had the meeting at school and I thought it went very well. His teacher this year really seems to enjoy her job and the challenges of teaching "gifted" kids and she had already done some online research on the issues Robbie's dealing with. She said, and I agree, that she thought we were going to work well together and get the boy successfully through 4th grade! I think I'm just going to love her!

We had some MAJOR snafus with the bus routes but I THINK (knock wood) that as of this morning we've worked our problems out. It sounds like there were problems throughout the district. I got thanked for being so pleasant everytime I called the transportation office. I didn't think I was acting all that special so they must have been getting some really cranky calls. There's some road construction messing things up on our side of town so I'm sure that isn't helping the bus drivers either. Not a job I'd want to do so I'll stay pleasant until they give me reason otherwise. I can't blame the first day snafus or construction on them though!

I know another round of Tropical Storm Crap is out there but for now I'm just going to enjoy the lull! And maybe....eventually....scrapbook something!

Monday, Monday

This evening was the "Back To School Ice Cream Social" at R's school. Robbie got to put his stuff away in his desk and see his new teacher. He also stopped in and talked to last year's teacher for a minute. I was surprised but impressed when last year's teacher asked if she could hug him and he said ok. He didn't hug back but just letting her hug him was a big step. I think they both frustrated each other at times last year (I'm keeping my opinions out of it) so it was surprising to see their interaction this evening.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with this year's teacher as well as the school counselor and the principal. I was surprised once again and impressed at how quickly his new teacher replied to my e-mail requesting a last minute appointment during what has to be a hectic time for them. I'm praying that's a good sign for the year ahead.

We hit McD's after the school thing and Robbie said it would be cool to get the mini flamingo beanie baby in his happy meal. He actually DID get that one in his meal and said that "today was a good day". Anytime I hear that I have a good day. Might be kind of silly to think that God is using a happy meal toy to remind me He's near but I'm going to go with it anyway.

I haven't slept well in over a week. I went to bed early last night and just laid there unable to sleep. Everytime I closed my eyes they'd just pop back open due to the never ending stream of thoughts in my head. I ended up coming downstairs and watching Roseanne reruns on TVLand until after 2 AM. I took a muscle relaxer around 1 am to help with the tension in my neck which meant that I was groggy most of the day.

Funny how a quick e-mail response and a Happy Meal flamingo can give you the "umph" to fight through the grogginess and find something positive to hang onto.

However, I'd still be willing to trade a child or two for some SLEEP maybe!

The web can be a dangerous place...

...especially if you're wont to go looking for as much information that you can find on a particular subject. I've been looking at websites concerning children with OCD. Apparently ADD and OCD can often go hand in hand so there's a crossover of information and a lot of it. On one website there was a FAQ section and a parent had asked what could they have done to prevent ADD in their child, one of the "possible" factors was a lack of oxygen during birth. Automatically my mind goes back to that prolapsed cord and the emergency c-section. I know it does no good to try to figure out why and who, if anyone, is to blame, and I'd be the first person to tell someone else that and mean it....for them. But for myself there are moments, not all the time but definitely moments, where I can't help but wonder "What if......". Does it do any good? Of course not but it is what it is.

It's an extremely helpless feeling to not be able to fix something for your child. And then that helplessness turns into anger. I get angry at God for starters, why should ANY child have to go through the things I see my son going through or the things I hear about a friend's child going through as a young adult. It's not fair, it's not right. And once again, I know life isn't fair, but it angers me that any child should have to suffer through any condition, medical, mental or lousy living conditions. As adults we either sink or swim through our own actions and decisions but for a child to have do fight to swim? It just isn't right.

Then I get angry at myself because I can't fix it and make life a little easier for him. And those days when I lose my patience and get momentarily angry with him I get both anger and guilt slamming through my body.

And then there are those family members, friends or acquaintances who scoff at what the family doctor, school counselor, two therapists and a child psychiatrist have said and say "He's just trying to control everyone around him. He just doesn't WANT to do x,y or z. Why doesn't x bother him if y does?" You know what? We don't know why x doesn't bother him if Y does and HE doesn't know why either! Yep, anger shows up there too.

Perhaps I should have titled this one as "My blog is an angry place..."! I'm just feeling drained and worn out the past couple of weeks. I've used up my reserves and somebody making a less than smart decision concerning the boy last week didn't help either. So yes, there's some anger there too. I'm trying to work through it all and get back to a calmer place so I can help my son as best as I can but right now I'm feeling tapped. And school starting this Wednesday has me concerned too. After talking to his therapist about it this week I've decided I need to call the school Monday and try to arrange a meeting with his teacher and the school counselor to fill them in on this summer's developments. And then try not to get too defensive for him during said meeting.

On a good day the boy is so awesome! He's even awesome on the bad days but you couldn't convince him of that. I just want to do my best for him and my girls too (I worry especially about my middle child feeling resentful of all this drama, so far so good but I couldn't blame her if she felt lost in the shuffle sometimes). And right now I'm falling way short of that goal and some of those dangerous websites don't exactly help either. Maybe I should be looking at "get rich quick" sites and then the travel sites???

I'm paying vet support this month!

Daisy's been twice this month for ailments and Belle went yesterday for her annual exam. They said she's doing pretty well for an old gal! But after a couple of tests (one of which she let them know she was not happy about them probing back there!), shots and another year of heartworm preventive meds I once again thought "Holy crap!" (ala Frank Barone) when I got the final bill. I'm still wondering if I can convince the insurance company they are newly adopted children with a hair body problem! We've paid around $500 to the vet's office this month, ok, the credit card company has paid it and I'll be paying them and paying and paying......! But you have to keep the critters healthy so what else can you do? Besides sigh a lot when the bill comes in?! lol

I think Robbie has passed his nightmares off to me. The past few nights I've been dreaming there's some faceless person after me because they think I know something. No idea what it is I supposedly know or why they want to kill me over it! Last night's version morphed into my getting a job tying bows onto candy but only if I'd come in and work on Thanksgiving Day when I had a houseful of company. No idea where any of it came from!

Today is the first day this week I don't have to take a dog or a child to an appointment. There are plenty of household things I should be doing but I'm considering making myself scrapbook. I'm not really in the mood to do that either but I want to be so maybe if I force myself to do it it will work? I need something fun to reset my mood-ometer!

It's the end of the day

and I am oh, so glad it is! Today was another rough appointment day. This doesn't feel like the right forum to go into detail....so why bring it up, you may ask. I guess to ask for some prayers. I feel like I've lost a former sounding board area and I don't want to bother anybody with all this "schtuff", because it can be heavy schtuff, so I'll just ask for some prayers, if you don't mind. And ask you don't judge me too harshly if you see me on the evening news with the announcer saying "Indy Metro Area Mom Goes Bonkers!" ;-)

I just sat here trying to think of what else to write about and this week it all seems so negative! Sheesh I say! I had to take Daisy back to the vet because she had diarrhea all week-end. All their tests came back negative so they're treating the symptoms which meant more expensive medicine plus she needed another 'scrip for the heartworm medicine so there was another $180. OUCH! She's been an expensive doggy this month!

Good news is Samantha got hired as an assistant manager at The Children's Place last week! So I found something good to say but it's HER news not really mine so let's think some more..........

Well, it IS the end of the day so that's good!

Quiet for almost a month!

Who woulda thunk it possible?!? I just seem to be stuck in one of those phases where writing seems like a chore and nothing I've done seems blog-worthy. WARNING: I'm very much in a blah mood today due to lack of sleep. Nightmare having son around 3 am and then a Schoodle with a tiny bladder around 5:30. And it took me until almost 5 am before I could fall asleep from checking on nightmare boy.

Reader's Digest version of the past month....Katie went to camp for almost a week, Mark flew to Kansas and drove a truck back to Indy with Samantha and her belongings in it, next week Robbie and Mark went to scout day camp and that brought us to last week where we didn't do much of anything. I'm kind of feeling like I've become nothing more than a activity director/maid lately. I guess more than sleep is feeding that blah feeling!

I have so many photos I should be getting into scrapbooks and there's a part of me that wants to scrap but it just seems like work right now for some reason. I don't miss my former employers but I do miss my co-workers/friends and those CHA show recap meetings we had at work! Those always inspired me, probably more in the shopping department than in the scrapping one but still they inspired me! We drove to a scrapbook store on the western outskirts of Indy yesterday. We stopped in there once last summer too and Samantha and I have agreed it's not worth the trip from our side of Indy. It's not that it's neccessarily a bad store (although both times we were in there I didn't feel overly welcome) but there's not much there that I couldn't get at Archiver's or Michael's which are both much closer to me. And a lot of stuff I saw in there yesterday is stuff I remember stocking onto shelves and pegboards in Kansas over a year ago. I think some of that is just indicative of the hobby industry in this economy though so not all the "fault" (for lack of a better word) is the store's. It was just kind of depressing to go in and not get excited over anything though. There is a Sonic out that way (again none close to us!) and even that didn't live up to our fond memories! Both my and Samantha's lemonberry slushes were very heavy on the lemon and light on the berry! I'm glad she mentioned it first so I didn't think my blahness had applied itself to scrapbook shopping AND Sonic!

Friday we did go hiking through Ft. Harrison State Park. Very nice little state park and you really don't realize you're so close to the "big city" or one of the interstates! We went on trails and ended up hiking over a couple of miles, thankfully it was a cool day for July so we didn't sweat and stink nearly as much as we could have! lol It was me and the three kids and I think we all had a lot of fun. A lot of it would probably fall into the "you had to be there" category but we had fun together! Eventually I'll get the pictures uploaded and I'll share a couple. I never did get a good one of the countless daddy long legs we kept running across though. Those things were EVERYWHERE! Along with Samantha's would be killer squirrel and the "mountain" the three of them climbed up and almost fell down. I stood at the bottom to catch them as they came down in an uncontrolled run almost! I should have sang Miley Cyrus' "The Climb" so Sam could have done her interpretative dance!

And now we've started back to school shopping. Can you believe that? They go back in three weeks! Summers keep getting shorter and shorter it seems.

And there you have it, the blahness that is me! ;-)