Trick or Sleep

I informed the twins this year that they were too old to go out trick-or-treating for Halloween. They both reluctantly took the news rather well, I thought. I was so happy to be finished with this ridiculous ritual. I've always HATED Halloween from the very depths of my soul.

Well . . . enter Brian. Fresh home from Idaho. He tells the twins that he's excited to take them out trick-or-treating this year. They tell him that Mom said "no". He jumps in the middle of my business and says, "what's wrong with you? Of course they are going out on Halloween. I'm taking them and you don't have to do anything." Hmmmm . . . that sounds pretty sweet. Okay deal!

He holds true to his promise and I proceed to enjoy my lovely quiet evening home (because in 15 years we have NEVER had a single trick-or-treater and I LOVE it!). Evidently, the story goes a bit like this . . .

Jacob is running to beat feet from one house to another. Jeff (who also went with the group) overhears a mother tell her 4 year old to not run because he might trip and fall. Right on cue, Jacob is running full speed ahead across someone's lawn and trips and does a complete face plant in the grass. Nice. He pops right back up and just keeps on going.

Courtney, after about six houses starts complaining that she's tired and wants to go home. Brian will have none of this (you see, Brian is highly motivated. He knows like he knows like he knows that Mom isn't about to let the twins have the candy so that means that him and Jeff are splitting the loot 50/50 - he's right, for the most part). He shakes Courtney off of his arm where she's hanging and begging to stop and tells her to get right back to work. She does.

When they arrive home around 9:30 Courtney can't wait to get to bed. Jacob wants to tell me all about the haunted house they visited and all the fun they had. I listen for a couple of minutes then remind him that 6:00 a.m. comes pretty dang early so he'd best be getting to bed. Off he goes. As soon as they are in bed, Jeff makes a run out to the car and comes in carrying something that resembles Santa's bag. Holy mackerel! I don't think I've EVER seen this much candy in one place. It's beyond disgusting!

The following morning as soon as the twins are safely off to school, the two go through the candy and divide it up. They did pack a few baggies of candy that the twins can have upon occasion. The rest? Well, I just don't even want to know. I'm so grossed out by all of this. The candy they gave the twins will probably last until this time next year, or beyond.

Well, we ALL agreed that this is absolutely the last flipping year that those kids of mine are going out on Halloween. So, I'd like to say, "GOOD RIDDANCE TO YOU, HALLOWEEN!"

The Dating Game

As I mentioned before, Brian is home from Idaho. As I also mentioned before, he managed to get himself into a bit of trouble while he was there. One of the consequences of said trouble is that he has no driver's license for the span of about two years. Yikes! That's a heck long time for a young man. Another consequence is that his girl of 1-1/2 years kicked his bum to the curb. I'm pretty certain he deserved it, but his heart was broken nonetheless.

Well, these two things don't seem to be slowing my boy down at this point. The downside of being home is that we live a good half hour away from town way UP in the hills. It's not a drive for the faint of heart. Our road is really scary for those who aren't familiar with it. Brian has been in town interacting with the likes of a variety of females and they all seem to be more than willing to give him a ride home at the latest hours of the night. What the heck?!?

He told me he was hanging with this one girl so I thought, "Oh, I guess this is who he's going to be dating." Then within a day or two there was another girl and then another girl and so on. I asked him about it and his response? "Mom, I'm SO not into getting into another relationship. I just want to hang out and have fun." Well . . . um . . . . okay . . .

There is a part of me that is just an old fashioned girl. A guy asks you out on a date. If he can't pay or pick me up in his car and provide an enjoyable evening, well he just isn't someone I want to be associating with. Nowadays? Yeah, these girls are pretty aggressive. So so so glad I'm married (and happily at that) and don't have to figure out this new fangled dating thing out.

A Good Day's Work

My boy is back living with me from Idaho. I've missed him terribly while he was away. Unfortunately, he found his way into a bit of trouble and now has . . . ahem . . . consequences. Not only does he had a lot of legal consequences (yuck), but he also has quite a bit of financial consequences. The majority of those financial obligations are payable to your's truly . . . me.

I've devised a plan. He can work for me at $10/hour and all the monies will go toward his debt to me. He actually went for the idea. We've had quite a few errands to run since he's been home so today was actually his second day of working for me. I came home from a rather busy morning and worked alongside him and my SIL. We shoveled horse poop, raked and loaded leaves, built compost bins, cleaned out and restocked my horse trailer and worked on several of my gardens. We got so much accomplished. I'm completely exhausted tonight but happy.

I do have to say this. I was pretty sure he was going to give me a LOT of grief and static about helping me out but he has been a pretty dang good sport. He has dove in really done a great job. Does this mean he is FINALLY growing up?

Perspective

Today I was working at my sister's place on her books. We were uber busy because I was about four months behind (yikes!). Before I knew it, I realized that it was 1:00 and my daughter was going to be out of school before I could get her picked up today (I was about two hours away). I still had a good 1-1/2 hours left of work to do.
I began calling my son, my son-in-law, my son's friends and anyone else I could think of in hopes of finding someone to go pick up my kid. No phones were being answered anywhere. I was beginning to get a bit panicked. I finished doing my work thinking that very shortly someone would answer their phone. Nope.
Once I began driving back toward my town I, of course, encountered massive traffic congestion. Annoying!!! I was fit to be tied. Of course, I became more and more agitated and Brian (who was with me) got really quiet because he knew that at any minute, I was most likely going to snap.

And, as should be expected, Courtney was still standing out in front of the school waiting (I was 45 minutes late). She didn't have a care in the world and hardly noticed that I was late at all. Great.

The lesson learned here? EVERYTHING should be given the 10-year perspective which is; In 10 years, how important will this moment be? (Believe it or not, I was taught that by a 12 year old boy). Yeah, here we are 2 hours later and the whole incident is all but forgotten by the people involved. Whaddya know?

Not a Baby Fan

When i was in high school I was a waitress. Everyone on my shift KNEW that you only put kids in my section if there was absolutely NO alternative. I really HATED children. I swore that the day would never arrive when I would have children. Some things change. Some things don't.

Fast forward a lot of years and here I am. A mom to a lot of children. Oh, I like my own, for the most part, but I'm still not a fan of other people's kids. Somehow, I'm guessing there is a lesson for me around this.

I am a volunteer at the yoga studio that I call my Mother Ship. I am a FRONT DESK worker and I've been doing this gig for about four months. I work once a week and there is a child care person that is in charge of watching the children of various clients that are taking classes. However, I can pretty much honestly say that the child care person on whatever shift I seem to be working usually doesn't show up. That leaves me tending the front desk AND the children.

The children in the childcare when I'm doing this are usually high need babies that have chosen this moment in time to scream their ever lovin guts out for the entire hour and a half that their moms are in class. Last night I walked up and down the sidewalk for over an hour with a screaming baby. This morning, here I am walking around bouncing another fussy baby. ENOUGH!! Right now I just wish God would tell me the lesson I'm supposed to learn from this madness. I promise, I'll be good and learn quickly. Lol.

And my girls wonder why I'm not into being a fun grandma.

The Good Life

I have this new friend. Her name is Misti and I think she's a beautiful person. She has such wonderful energy and I LOVE being around her.

Funny story . . . when I met Misti I was pretty sure that her life was as perfect as it could get. I mean, this woman seemed to exude wonderfulness. She always seemed to have a smile on her face and she was always calm and she was just . . . perfect. I've since gotten to know her and I'm happy to report that her life is NOT perfect. Just like the rest of us. I'm not happy that she has problems, I just happy to see that you can maintain a happy, calm essence even when you are in the midst of a storm. And, baby, her storm was a doozy.

I had the privilege of zoning her feet about a month ago. It was a beautiful experience. I felt a wonderful energy when I was doing her feet and definitely picked up on some disturbances that she confirmed. Yay for foot zoning!

Anyway, today she is coming up to my house to be zoned and then we are bartering. She is going to be doing some energetic work on me. I'm so so so excited because it's something that I might want to explore and it'll be wonderful to see it totally in action on ME! It seems that the more I delve into this world of natural healing, the more I discover and the more I realize how perfect and wonderful our bodies are. They are so capable of healing themselves with just a little assistance from what God gave us. Awesome!

So today is a happy day. I'm feeling back to myself after weathering yet another horrendous storm and I just love my life. Beautiful music, spectacular sunrises and the serenity of my sanctuary make everything seem possible.

Tossing and Turning

That was me last night. Tossing and turning and turning and tossing. Couldn't sleep at all last night! It was awful. I was irritated about something. Turned on the light at 1:00 to maybe read my book and fall asleep. As soon as I opened it I slammed it shut because it was so not what I wanted to read. Dang! I was a wreck. Of course, I must have fallen asleep somewhere in there because 5:00 was nudging me before I knew it!

When something like this happens, I usually get a phone call and one of my children (boys) are in trouble. It usually never fails. Oh, I have nights where I just can't sleep but when it's this kind of tumultuous stressful nervousness, it's my built-in indication that there's trouble knocking on my door.

Well, nobody has called. I'm patiently waiting for each of my children to check in to give me the thumbs up for the day. I've only seen three of them thus far - four to go.

Of course, we could just chock it up to too much caffeine (although I drank less green tea than normal yesterday) and make a mental note to lay off the stuff today. Yeah, let's go with that.

Okay, happy day! Oh . . . kids call your mother!