I’m a happy little camper; a happy camper yes I am.

(think melody to Yankee Doodle when reading that – I’m singing it in my head)

Yeah yeah, I’m feeling silly today but savings oodles of money can do that to a stingy Deej.

The wedding is in three weeks. I have been putting off finding a dress to wear to the big event. I just haven’t been anticipating the thought of digging through atrociously decorated with faux pearls and gawdy sequins type dressed. I hate that shit. I hate those “mother of the bride” type dresses.

Yesterday Babycub and I went shopping for all kids of gizmos and doo-dads. She suggested I find a dress and I shuddered. I opted to use the age old excuse many women use when confronted with this particular horror “Uh, I need to shave my legs”.

Perfect.

After all, who wants to try on dresses with less than smooth gams? Not, I – that’s for sure!

With that out of the way, we continued having a marvelous day poking through one store after another. Then it happened. Some odd force drew me into a cute little boutique that I’ve never ventured into before. I found myself being pulled toward a rack of clothes and right toward this luverly printed jackety thing.

I pulled it out and asked Babycub what she thought. We both loved it. Then my face fell. My jackety thing with the fitted tank under it came with pants NOT a skirt. I sighed mightily and Babycub suggested I call the bride – my oldest daughter. If she could live with her “mother of the bride” in pants, I most certainly would be happy to prance down the aisle in this outfit of outfits. It was perfection on a hanger!

She didn’t care. She knows I’m never going to be the 50s Throwback Family that she’s marrying into. I am me. My family is unique, and I love it. We don’t fit molds.

With glee, I scampered to the dressing room to try on my treasure. It fit like it was made for me. I flounced and preened in front of mirrors, Babycub, and the sales clerks. It was “me”. I was thrilled.

I didn’t look at the price.

I knew I’d be spending a few bucks to find the perfect ensemble for this wedding. I just figured this would be pricey and that was that.

There it was – the tag.

But wait!

It was marked down.

The mark down was crossed off and marked down again.

Wait!

The marked down mark down was also crossed off and marked down again.

But wait even again!

The dress was on clearance.

After all the markdowns, they were still discounting it by 75% of the last markdown.

To sum it all up – my perfect perfect luverly delightfully make me smile and feel purdy outfit cost me ….

*drumroll*

$14.00

Yes, that’s FOURTEEN dollars.

The gods of shopping were smiling on me yesterday!

Peace

And suddenly there are boobies.

Yes, the boobie fairy has sprinkled some kind of mammary dust on my wee little girl.

My little babycub has a chest and I’m not quite ready to see her this way! Last weekend she tossed on some sweater, walked out into the living room and said “omg, mom, my boobs look like the size of Texas in this!!!”

I had to laugh and promptly texted her older sister about this so we could harass the poor little Texan in tandem. After all, if your family doesn’t give you endless amounts of shit, what good are they?

We spent the day calling her Tex while she rolled her eyes at us in utter dismay.

When her bod first began to develop she was extremely self-conscious about the whole puberty/mother nature/hormone thing. She’s accepted the inevitable – she will get boobs, pimples, periods, body hair, and all that jazz.

My house has changed. The hub and I have adjusted to the Mancub having a deeper voice, a hint of whiskers, and littlemanuppityness. Now we are moving into the moody hormonal aspect of a teen girl. Both of them at once? Really?????

Years ago when these two were little,  someone repairman was at our house and seemed rather puzzled to see the gap in the ages of our kids. The hub looked at him and said “Yeah, they are all ours. God is punishing us for something to land us with two year olds in teenagers all at the same time.”

Some days I long for those old days, but time marches on and I wouldn’t change a thing about my cubs. Okay, well, maybe she could be a wee bit less chesty – she’s being ogled by teen boys and she’s only thirteen!

Peace

It still doesn’t seem quite real to me that Led isn’t going to be there for me the way he was for so very long.

For the first few days I cried every time I thought of him, but for the past two days I haven’t cried. I’m doing okay.

All kinds of odd things have gone through my mind.

I think we all have similar thoughts when we lose someone we love. We fret over things left unsaid. We moan over things we wish we hadn’t said or done. Shit, the last word I actually texted to him was “die”. Go figure! Granted, I wasn’t telling him to die; I simply texted “crap, my battery is about to die” – even so, the irony of it all didn’t escape me.

I’ve been angry with him. He promised he’d always be there. He isn’t. I know this because I call his cell each day just to hear his voice. Perhaps the finality of it all will sink in when the phone is disconnected and I get a recording saying the number is no more. Until then, I shall call just to have that bit of connection.

I’ve come to realize that I’m being incredibly selfish. I’m thinking of his death in terms of “what will I do without him in my life?” Sheesh, I have made this all about me. The reality of the situation is  that I should be sad for him and not for me. I think grief tends to be that way for most people though. We are sad for ourselves because losing that someone takes them away from us. It’s the survivors that are feeling lonely – it’s not the one that’s gone.

Even though I hadn’t talked to him right before he died, he knew I loved him. I know he did. I believe that deep in my heart.

I also believe he didn’t know or sense how close he was to dying. I’ve heard over and over from people how their loved one just “knew”. I really think he just went to sleep that night and didn’t wake up in the morning. I don’t think he felt shitty and suspected that was his last night or that the end was nearing. I believe he’d have called me to say good-bye if that were the case. He wouldn’t have just bailed from this planet on me.

I do believe his spirit, his presence, or whatever is here and always will be around me. He may not physically be here to kick my ass when I act like an idiot, but the essence of him is here. I can hear his voice in my head giving me encouragement.

I’m still finding the hardest part is that I can’t just pick up the phone any time I want to talk to him. I think that will bother me for a very long time.

In the meantime, I am finding myself smiling when those memories of him hit me by surprise. It’s okay. I miss him, but I will be okay. The world will keep spinning and as long as he’s in my heart, he’s going to be spinning on it with me.

Peace

Nobody will understand this entry better than most of you. In our own odd little ways we have forged friendships and much more through this medium that non-blogger type people do not and will not understand. I know many of us have already mentioned this like this.

So, here I am.

Sad beyond belief…

I can’t sleep because I just want to cry…

It’s the middle of the night and the one person that wouldn’t get cranky by a middle of the night phone call from me for no particular reason isn’t going to answer. Sure, there are others I could call, but some would be a mite irritated about the time, others wouldn’t get what I’m feeling. This one person wouldn’t question. He’d just listen to me cry and let me get it all out. After that, he’d find something to say to make me laugh.

I cannot call him tonight or any other night…

He’s why I’m so sad…

A couple of you might remember him. He really didn’t blog at efx2 very often and he never wrote anything here; he signed up there to write a few entries here and there because I nagged him to do it.

He registered here and efx2 as leduntitled. I just called him “Led”.

I had this phone call from a number I didn’t recognize. I didn’t answer the phone. Instead I listened to the voice message from a person I didn’t know. It simply said “I’m L…, a friend of Ed’s. Could you please call me?”

I knew.

I didn’t want to make that call, but I had to.

He died last weekend.

His friends hunted and searched for my phone number because they knew how close he and I were. They knew I needed to know. They invited me to come and stay with them so I could attend his memorial service. They seem wonderful. I’m glad he had them in his life.

Sadly, I knew this call would come. I just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon.

He’s had health problems for the past few years. I’ve known that, but he didn’t complain and tended to try to shove the seriousness of his illness in the background. He always told me he didn’t want me to worry.

Our friendship has spanned years and years. Once upon a time, I wandered into some silly chatroom and met this guy. He was sarcastic, odd, funny, intelligent, sweet, and silly. We hit it off immediately and began to spend hours and hours talking.

No matter what happened in his life or mine, we stayed friends. There were some ups and downs, just like in any friendship. There were times that I wanted to smack him silly, and I’m sure there were times he felt the same way about me.

He was a computer savy tech geek who rolled his eyes when I admitted I didn’t know how to copy and paste. He patiently taught me how to navigate the net and do all kinds of funky things with a computer.

He forgave me when I wasn’t a very good friend to him. He’d tell me if I was being an idiot, but never did he stop being there for me.

Before there were inexpensive cell phones everywhere (yes, we have been friends long), he got an 800 number in case I wanted to call him – any time, anywhere.

When things were crappy in my life, he listened and cared.

When shit hit the fan in his life, I listened and cared.

I was married with kids; he’d never married and had no children. Even so, he seemed to love when I babbled on about the goofy things my kids did. He asked about them all the time. When he was in a relationship, he’d use me as a soundingboard when his g/f was driving him nuts.

He was just always there.

Several years ago, everyone in my immediate family forgot my birthday. He didn’t. He put together a silly birthday website to make me laugh. He was so angry that I’d been forgotten here that he made a point of always making sure that never happened again. My birthday is Monday. It will be the first time in thirteen years that I won’t hear from him.

I hated knowing he was so sick. I hated even thinking about the possibility that he wouldn’t be there some day. I tend to shove bad things into the background. I tend to try to avoid the ugly parts of the world. I ignored that I might lose him.

In doing so, I haven’t been the best friend to him lately.

I wasn’t blogging here, you know that – I also wasn’t being very good about talking to him as much as we did in the past. I haven’t had any contact with him in over a week.

I keep going back to last year when he was really feeling sick. I demanded he go to the hospital and threatened to call his mom, his friends, etc. if he didn’t go. He went and his doc told him he’d have died if he didn’t get in when he did. Now, I am thinking that maybe if I’d talked to him last week, I would have realized he needed to see a doc again; he was terrible about doing things like that.

In any case, there is a hole in my world right now and I just needed to talk it out. Like I said, you peeps – you people understand how much we can learn to care for someone online. Truly, none of my friends that don’t go online would understand how I’m feeling – they would think I’m nuts.

Bear with me for a bit. I have a feeling I may be writing about this again one of these days.

Thanks

Peace

This morning I woke up to the ringy-ding-ding of the phone rather than the beep beep beep of my alarm. That can only mean one thing.

I overslept!

Fortunately, we have no kids here today – it’s a workshop day.

My first call was to the school; it went like this.

“It’s Deej, I overslept, I’m outside with my dogs, and I’m going to throw some clothes on and be right there.”

“Puleeze do.”

“Smartass! Don’t let anyone do anything until I get there. Put everyone and everything on hold!”

“Oh I will. We’ll all be standing at the windows waiting for you to make an appearance.”

I love working with a group of smartass peeps!

I flew into the building and dashed to the office to let the secretary know they could begin working only to find her, my boss, and another teacher pal gazing out the window at my car. They said “Whew, we can work now!”

Gotta love Fridays like this one.

Peace

I know, I know, it has been a while.

My urge to sit down and write simply flew out the window one day and the damn thing wouldn’t come back. I’ve since found a small replacement mojo and decided to scamper in here to say hello to mostest favorite blogger peeps.

Overall, life has been good for me and mine. My biggest complaint is the cold weather that has moved in and grabbed my corner of the world by the testicles. The weather dudes have promised we will actually see temps getting into the 20s next week. Perhaps, I shall thaw out by then.

I’m adding a new baby to the family soon – well sorta soon. In March or April I’ll be bringing home the little bundle of joy. It will be a girl. We haven’t completely decided on a name yet. We’re getting a Newfie! Gotcha – ha! It’s a pupster!

Once we decided to add to the fam, I began researching various breeds of dogs. Our lab is very old and won’t be with us much longer so I want another large dog. I decided to go all out and get a really really large dog.

Originally, I was going to get a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, but their short life span made me change my mind. I’d actually found a breeder and was going to be getting one in June, but now – no. Swissies rarely live past eight years – that’s just not enough time!

The Newfi will be an adventure! I told the breeder I chose that I wanted a large dog. Somewhere in the midst of that sentence, he heard something like “gigantic” dog. Female Newfies average about 120 pounds and males about 150. My pup is going to be uh above average. The mother of my new baby is 150 and the daddy is 175! This should be interesting!

I hope you all had an awesome holiday season! I’ll bebop around here soon to catch up with you.

Until then…

Peace

Years ago my state initiated something called “open enrollment” in our public school system. Families and kids can choose which district they would like their kids to attend. If they opt out of their home district, they can request another district allow their kids to go there. The home district must approve the transfer, the new non-home district can choose whether or not to accept the kid. Once a kid is enrolled in the new district, they cannot force them to leave if they are failing or being a twit. On the other hand, the home district has to allow them to come back at any time.

Over the years, various bugs have been worked out of the system. For instance, the state doesn’t want kids hopping from one district to another for sports. They addressed that with very rigid eligibility rules that seem to be working quite well. Even so there are still some problems. One of them is funding. Parents continue to pay school taxes in their home district while their kids attend class in a different district. Those parents have nothing vested in the home district and tend to vote down additional funding the home district may need. It can be frustrating.

All of those problems seem inconsequential when I sit back and look at what Bush’s “NCLB” (No Child Left Behind) program is doing to a number of kids. I understand that he was hoping to fix problems in education. I know there were some problems. I know some kids were struggling. However, I’m seeing more kids being left behind in a rather ugly game that’s happening.

Kids are tested, retested, and tested again. The plan is all kids – even special learners – will be at high performing levels by 2014. Everywhere the pressure is on for districts to make sure as many kids as possible do well on these tests. To meet this goal, some things are being left out of curriculums altogether so teachers can focus on teaching to the test. Perhaps one can argue those things are not “necessary”, but I argue that higher level thinking requires more than the rote memory type things that is needed on these tests.

Within each district students are divided into all kinds of categories – males, females, Native American males and females, African American males and females, free and reduced lunch eligibility kids, special education kids, etc. etc. etc. If any of those groups doesn’t make the grade, the school has failed to meet AYP (annual yearly progress). If too many kids are absent and don’t take the tests, the school fails to meet AYP. Currently, my school is failing to meet AYP. Both our elementary and secondary schools as a whole flew through the testing, yet we needed one more special education student to pass the tests in order to meet – it didn’t happened.

While each year, the bar for passing the tests gets higher more and more school districts fail to meet AYP. Currently, over half the districts in my state are failing for one reason or another. If a district continues to fail, their funding can be cut – along with other penalties. All of this puts school and students into a pretty sad situation.

I never truly realized how much until this year. I don’t know how I missed this or why I didn’t pay closer attention to what is happening. Whatever the reason, I am saddened by what I am seeing.

Several of my co-workers and I were looking at the “list” of kids that are cross-registering out of our district this year. Each of them were kids that were struggling students; a number of them were “my” kids – the ones I’ve blogged about – the ones that I have poured my heart into – the ones that are kids in trouble that need extra help. I sighed as I mentally said good-bye to them. It didn’t hit me until someone said “This is going to help with AYP.”

It’s true.

In an tragic sense, it’s a cause for celebration among districts when their “kids in trouble” bail out and head to other districts. Along with their problems, they take their failing test scores with them. Those scores become another district’s problem; it puts another district at risk. It saves your own.

I hate this.

The very kids that we should be helping most become liabilities to school districts. No district wants to risk the loss of funding. The kids are becoming casualties. In essence, we are leaving more children behind now that we’ve adopted “no child left behind”. Districts are better off without them.

I’m angry.

One neighboring district with a large student population has come right out and said – they crunch the numbers to find out how many absent kids they can have before being cited. After that number has been determined, they tell their slowest kids to stay home the day the test is being administered. As of yet, my district doesn’t play that game – we test 100% of our kids.

Newspapers report the results. People see failing districts and mutter about how bad our schools are. They don’t realize what’s happening behind those doors. They don’t know some districts are failing because two of their kids with Down’s Syndrome weren’t able to pass reading and math tests at the 8^th grade level. They don’t realize that some are failing because too many kids failed to show up the day the test was given. They don’t realize how many variables are.

All that aside – my heart is breaking for those lost kids – the ones no district wants to claim.

Fuck the whole thing – THOSE kids have always been my very favorites. While I enjoy teaching and working with the higher achievers too, I utterly love the challenge of the troubled kids. To many many districts and administrators those kids are simply liabilities.

It sucks – welcome to NCLB.

Peace

Fa la la la la, la la la la – I love love love love my friend, Eilie! Yesterday I was grumbly and cranky, but the horse thing completely got my mind off the situation that was making me grumbly and cranky.

That didn’t make it go away though, so today the grumbly crankiness was back. It’s a long story, I won’t bore you with the details. Needless to say, I was irritated in a huge huge way.

This evening I was sounding off about it to Eilie and she came up with the perfect way to resolve the situation. Brilliant! I’m going to use her solution and life will be good.

Yup, that’s what friends are for – solving problems. Damn, I love that girl!

Peace

Life can be funny. Sometimes just when you are feeling utterly cranky and ornery, something odd happens that makes you laugh and changes your mood in the blink of an eye.

Today’s entry was going to be a rant. Before I sat down to write, one of my best friends called and I wandered out to my upper deck to rant to her while sucking down a cup of coffee. Our lab was doing her usual wander about the yard to check out the chipmunks, I was muttering to “S” on the phone, and suddenly I heard a huge thundering noise.

I ran to the edge of the deck to see if a giant herd of deer was about to invade. There were no deer. There were two rather giant horses coming at full gallop. I blinked, I blinked twice, I said to “S” – “Uh, there are horses in my yard now.”

The kids came running as well. They were in the family room when they heard the pounding of running horses. Mancub said “Mom, I think we have horses.”

I hung up the phone and we watched as the horses galloped down to our pond, ran around the lower part of the yard, then came flying back toward the house. The lab was freaking out and we quickly realized we needed to get her onto the deck with us. As we called her, the horses flew closer.

There is a narrow walkway between the upper deck and the woods and they charged toward that just as our dog was running toward us. Panic set in. I was worried my kids were about to see their beloved pooch pounded under the feet of frightened equines. Fortunately, the dog got to us before the horses got to her.

We watched as the horses continued running through our yard before they took off down the road.

There are a number of homes around here that keep horses and the kids knew exactly which one our latest visitors belonged to. We hopped into the car to let them know – they weren’t home. Their neighbors were, however, and they said they’d come horse hunting as soon as they grabbed whatever one needs to chase down a runaway horse or two.

It was a whole new experience. It was amazing to see those beautiful animals running about. I’m hoping nothing happened to them because they absolutely lightened my mood and brought a smile to my face.

Now – I’m just dreading the moment the hub sees the torn up yard that the giant critters left behind! He’ll mutter, but he has a yard roller – this will just give him an excuse to use it.

Peace

PS – Logis, I am beginning to think I live in a zoo!

When we bought this place, the hub was thrilled to have a giant detached garage where he could store his toys. The building is commonly called the “Man Cave”. In it he stores boats, 4-wheelers, the mower, snowmobiles, fishing gear, ski equipment, etc. What once looked like a giant, roomy outbuilding is fast becoming filled to the brim.

We also have a very small barn on our property. We cleaned the place out so we could use that to store patio furniture and gardening stuff – the barn is more “my” outside space. That said, I hate going in there – it’s musty, dusty, spidery, and buggy creepy – not my thing!

Our house has a two stall attached garage as well. The plan for this space (other than storing vehicles) was shelving for holiday stuff, a place to keep the trash and recycling bins, and stuff like that. Nowhere in our plan was “Mouse Condo” – yet, the little buggers have decided to make our home their home.

They have settled into the garage in alarming numbers. Mancub has become a master mouse trapper. He’s baiting, setting, and dumping the dead mice on a daily basis. It’s simply disgusting!

If that wasn’t bad enough, they little creatures discovered the closet in my sunroom! My house has three floors of living space – the sunroom and foyer are on a floor by themselves. The sunroom is one of my favorite rooms in this house – it has a lot of windows, skylights, a woodstove, our hot tub, and a gazillion plants. It’s a wonderful place to curl up in a cushy chair and read a book.

In one corner of the room is a large walk in storage closet. I keep all kinds of things in this space. This is where my mistake began – I put a small bag of bird seed in thei. The damn bag may have well been a neon sign saying “Hello Mice – The Buffet is OPEN”. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Fortunately, the rest of the house is rodent free. We’ve set traps everywhere we could think of, and all of them have remained empty. But, between the storage closet and the attached garage, I’m utterly and completely disgusted, horrified, repulsed, and cruded out.

I cannot WAIT until they are gone. In the meantime, my mighty mouse trapping son will remain hard at work.

Yuk!

Peace