Dear Rant

Dear: Rant in no Particular Order

Okay feeling sorry for myself and frustrated so what better way than to get it out on paper or at least my computer screen. This also doubles for making myself not feel so guilty for neglecting my blogs oh for the past month… Yes we have moved and a lot is going on but shouldn’t I take advantage and BLOG about it?

Onward!

Dear: Mulch company who says you open at 8 am on Saturday but really don’t find it  necessary to open until I call your other two brances and ask whats up. Yes the first branch said, “Oh they’re open” Ah. No they’re NOT  I was just there.

Again Dear Mulch company who says you charge $25 a scoop and really charge $26. Not a HUGE deal but enough to take notice today. Yes many other days this would be shrugged off but today… NOT so much!

Oh yes another Dear Mulch Company who says you close at 3pm on Saturday but when I show up at 2:50 you’re not there.

Yes Mulch company…. YOU SUCK!

Moving on…

Dear Wonderful Baby Boy of Mine who has decided that squealing, throwing, making destruction, and not sleeping are a way of life recently… love ya! Side note: Why are your toys not interesting yet EVERYTHING else that is NOT a toy is? Just wondering.

Dear: my Lovely Baby Girl Yes you are going to be three in a week and I’m so proud of you but this grunting and squealing thing is very unbecoming.

Dear Buster Brown my lovely dog from college. Why must you be such a PIA? You Pee in the house if left out of your “room” (laundry room and hallway off the kitchen) and you bark when you’re in there. You spill your water them moment I put it out. You eat the trash if you are left unattended for more than a moment. You pretend to be deaf but alas you can hear when you have a desire to.

Today I decided to spend some quality time with you and took you for a ride in the car. You decided to run away after I got home to the neighbor (not particularly an animal lover) and tried to run in his garage. Yes THEN proceeded to YELP with all of your little Jack Russell might when I went to pick you up. All I have to say to you is GRRR!

Dear: Glass Top Stove You frustrate me! I miss my gas stove! I can’t seem to cook things well and even your oven doesn’t hold a temperature very well.

And lastly, for now, Dear: Jello my black cat (Yes I’ve picked my favorite!) who decided to run away last week for 5 nights! I was worried SICK and spent the week talking to neighbors, taking walks, and calling around to the humane societies. I’m so glad you’re home but next time call to say you’re going to be out of town!

Getting Real

I saw a quote recently saying that you know you’re a true friend if someone lets you over to their house without cleaning up first. I thought that was quite fitting and feel that I’ve only had a few of those in my life. It is very hard to get to that point with someone. It is kind of funny because life is all about allusion. By cleaning up we are giving someone the allusion that we are neat people that don’t have pillows on the ground, fake food all over the place, and don’t have dust bunnies rolling around the floor (oh wait I don’t have any of those… ahem). Yes, I admit to being one that likes appearances. It is important for me to vacuum and tidy up before almost everyone comes over. I’m still a work in progress!

It is always wonderful when you can “get real” with friends. Like admitting that you’re not 100% happy with your spouse or something else going on in your life. It’s easy to say “Oh everything’s going great,” but it’s another thing to say, honestly and not just griping, “No, I’m not super thrilled about that.” Now I’m not suggesting that someone turn into a griping, whining person, but it is realistic to not be happy all the time and have parts of your life that are not perfect. Again I’m going back to that importance of appearance. I used to think that if I said anything negative about a friend or my “wonderful” husband someone would think badly about me or who I had chosen. It is important to not complain about friends, but it’s another thing to have that someone who you can be your raw self with. It is a wonderful feeling to vent and express your feelings, however one sided they may be. It is even more wonderful to have that friend know the different times when you want to be commiserated with and times when you’d love a different perspective put on your dilemma to help you see things from a different angle.

Along these same lines of “getting real” is the realization for me that our society has such strange views on pain. It is easy and understandable to see someone in physical pain. ‘Yes, poor you, you have a broken shoulder. Wow that must hurt.’ But it is much more taboo for someone to discuss emotional pain and discomfort. I think that is where your “person”  you “get real” with comes in the most. That person who you can show your pain: physical and emotional. Knowing that I’ve gained a few of those recently is a WONDERFUL feeling. My wish for today is that everyone out there find their “person.”

Adventures with my mom

Most people's mother's would leave cookies on the table before they head off for a long weekend... not my mom. She leaves leaves BUGS on the kitchen counter! To clarify they were fly larva to be put out in the horse pasture to kill our flies. And yes most daughters would probably be disgusted by finding live bugs on their kitchen counter, but not me! I wouldn't change her out for ANY mother in the world! In fact if someone lined up every eligible mother in the world I'd still choose her!

A week ago my mom moved in with my family. She actually owns the house we live in and we are in the process of moving out. It has been a nice overlap and am looking forward to a few more weeks of combined household bliss:)

Over this past week we've already had our share of adventures...

My mom and I decided to head into the local small town to look around one morning. We had fun walking around and realized it was getting close to lunch time. My mom offered to take us out to eat. Not quite grasping that taking two kids out to eat is not always a walk in the park:) Yes both kids did do fairly well all in all but it wasn't the treat she was hoping for.


Next on our adventure that morning was the grain store. On the way my darling daughter had to use the potty. We pulled off and I pulled out her amazing potty seat for the car. I placed said potty seat on the console of the truck (think arm rest). It has a nice indent area and fits the potty seat nicely. Unfortunately I only had one grocery bag in the car (the potty seat uses grocery bags) and most times I try to use at least two. Mom was already laughing before we even realized that this particular bag did indeed have a hole in it and thank goodness had just filled up console and not gotten anywhere else. However as I'm trying to clean up and pull up my daughter's pants and get her back in her car seat my mom is laughing so hard she's crying. I mean I'd lost her into a fit of hysteria!


That afternoon after the kids decided naps were optional we decided to go for a walk in my double stroller and mom decided to bring along her dog. Refusing to bring a leash, since the dog is so well behaved, we took off along the road. For some reason there were a TON of cars on the road that day and Poppy (mom's dog) had a little trouble staying close at all times. I'd like to mention that the road we were on is dirt and not very busy most days. The next thing we knew it seemed like a funeral procession of like 5 trucks drove towards us down the road followed by a police car. After holding Poppy while they passed we continued down our journey.

On our way back home we ran into all of those trucks parked on the side of the road. We tried to wait them out by letting Poppy go down to the river and get a drink but after a few minutes we didn't have much of a choice and had to pass them. On my double stroller I have a Velcro strap for jogging and decided to use it to tie Poppy to the stroller while we walked past this strange group. As we were walking past Poppy decided she wanted to go for a ride and pulled against the strap which gave way and jumped into one of the open trucks, muddy paws and all. Then if that was not bad enough wouldn't come out when mom called her and tried to get her. Instead she jumped into the BACK seat on top of papers and documents. Then when the guys opened up the back door she jumped into the front seat again. Yes after more than a few minutes she gave up the fight but not after leaving her paw prints everywhere. The guys were GREAT thank goodness.



My husband and I are currently staying in our bonus room. This is actually quite a nice room but not really a bedroom and was formally used as a guest/cat room. It is located off of the bathroom upstairs which is nice because the kids rooms are upstairs as well. The other day I shut the door to it since we were having someone come look at the house and didn't particularly want them to see the room, long story. I would like to insert that both mom and I were running late. My mom was heading to a conference and the kids and I were on our way to a play date. As we were running around I asked my mom to open the door to make sure no cats were locked inside. She tried and called down the stairs that it was LOCKED. This was not acceptable in my mind so I just informed her that no it was not and she needed to pull harder. You see sometimes in times of stress I can get a little bossy and controlling... OK so the controlling part is most all times but still. Alas as I charged up the stairs to "show" my mom how to open the door I learned that it was in fact LOCKED. Yes one of my lovely children must have turned the lock. Now why does a door have a lock that is NOT a bedroom you might ask... yes so did we. The good part is that the door had a key. However, we had NO idea where the key was located. As mom ran downstairs to search the "junk" drawer I proceeded to work with a screwdriver and pliers (I think my husband packed the hammer). My plan was to remove the door from the hinges. Yes not a great plan, but it was becoming even more apparent that Yes a cat was locked in the room.

My mom did produce a key but it wouldn't turn the knob:( Back at it I went with a screwdriver with both kids playing in the bathroom. I FINALLY was able to push the door clicker thingy and got the door to open since I couldn't remove the hinges. All ended fine but was quite a fiasco in the moment. And I'd like to mention that just before this incident my lovely daughter had pinced her finger in the pantry door:( Both of us were a little late to our respective appointments but the cat was free:)

My lovely husband

From the computer of Jasmin:

Souse Rants

Okay I want to start off this posting topic by saying that not all of the posts labled spouse rants will be positive or negative because if they were either we’d be lying or we should seriously consider divorce. :)

Yes in any relationship there are ups and downs, like a roller coaster. You can’t feel the high unless you’ve felt the low. It is also important to note that highs and lows can happen for any particular amount of time. As my counterpart said, marriage is funny. I’ve heard from people who’ve been married for long periods of time that not all years are easy. Luckily we’ve had GREAT years just a few bad days/weeks. I’m truly married to the most wonderful man, for me. He’s not for everybody as I’m not either but I love him with all my heart and that is what matters.

We’ll start off with a bit of background information.  We’ve been married for just over 5 years and together just over 6. We went through a rough patch right after we got married and it only made us stronger. We still constantly work on our communication or my lack of wanting to hurt his feelings and bottling it up until it explodes. Yes I’m one of those. But I’m recovering and working on discussing issues right away.

Currently we’re in the process of buying a house. It is a very exciting/scary/wonderful/ frustrating process. This will be our first house and we’ve, or I’ve as I chose everyone we’re working with, had some issues with the realtor and lender. Yes it is amazing how incompetent professionals can be.

Back to marriage and partnership. I want to express how amazing my husband is but even he can drive me mad. I also want to insert this is coming from my point of view so YES I’m sure I drive him mad, too:) Just in case you read this, honey:) (not likely). Anyway here’s an example of my wonderful husband.

Okay this is a positive post because we’re in a positive moment.

So yeah last night when he got home I made dinner and went out to mow our yard/paddock in an attempt to get the place ready for my mom to come on Friday. Who knew it was bad if the mower smoked… Okay Yes I’m not an idiot and know it’s not ideal but was really trying to get the mowing done quickly so that we could get it all done before the next rain/impeding arrival of my mom and her horses. While mowing the paddock the mower kept clogging up so I had to start and stop it a few times and long story short fried the belt that makes the blades turn. Yes a mower with no turning blades doesn’t serve much purpose. Knowing I’d messed up I headed inside. Nonchalantly I asked my husband to please put the belt back on as it had “somehow” come off. Skeptically he agreed and headed outside. After I’d scrubbed my hands for ages I hesitantly looked outside to assess the situation. Yes I had indeed fried it! Did he yell or get frustrated? NO! He just said next time you see smoking you might want to not turn it on again and clean it out pronto. Yes I love him!

S. H. I. T.

From the computer of Jasmin:

Yup, this post is coming to you before 7:30, if I can get my internet to cooperate (it wants to sleep in about as much as I do) and yes I’m still in bed. Hence: from the computer of and not the desk, not that we even own a desk anyway:)

Back to the post now. Yes that classic spell what you don’t want the kids to hear. I found this quite funny while my 13 month old was in the bed early this morning and my husband and I were discussing someone’s incompetence. I simply stated that, “But we already knew she didn’t know s. h. i. t.” Now there are two funny parts to this statement. One I find funny is that I could have said ANY other word like anything, she’s incompetent, she is not quite all there. They all essentially hold the same meaning but certainly don’t have the same effect. Part two of my finding this discourse funny, no I don’t think it is entirely that it happened before 7 am and I had decided to stay up the night before but could be, is that he can’t understand it anyway. He’s just started talking but if I had not changed my inflection or made a big deal about it to a 13 month old it is all the same.

Yet we still spell quite a bit around our toddler and preschooler. Just yesterday at our library group the librarian spelled out candy. Now my daughter is a genius but she knows when you spell something in that context it can only mean one thingJ Yes she even knows P. A. R. K. and another one I can’t recall at this early hour that she learned from a song.

With all this said will I stop spelling around my children? Nope I feel that it keeps me on my toes and makes sure I can spell without spell checkJ

Change

From the computer of Jasmin:

Change sucks. Yes it’s necessary, inevitable, and unavoidable but still sucks!

Uncertainty is exciting and scary. There are so many things to consider.

Here is a letter that I composed over a month ago. Much of the change is still on the horizon, though a few things have taken place. It is still appropriate overall and worthy of rereading.

Change!

There is a lot of that coming up in our lives in the next few months! We will be buying a house, saying good bye to my horse, having my mom move in with us (she owns the house we live in) moving, and adapting to our new lives as responsible adults.

Some might view this as exciting, exhausting, sad, happy, relief, you name it. I could Google emotion and I will probably be feeling all of those coming up. For me it is all together and depending on the moment and what I'm obsessing over (house hunting, saying good bye to Lute, the to do list, the endless everyday things, and oh yeah the kids- a toddler and preschooler, I have a wealth of exhaustion and overwhelmation!

My pledge- I am going to do my best to find the positive and remain optimistic that the perfect house is out there, by not buying right away we can spend some time with nay nay, and my horse has had an amazing life and deserves to be put down before he hurts himself more (he injured himself a few months ago and is still lame off and on and losing a lot of weight.

Yes I'm going to add be optimistic to my HUGE to do list for myself and family!

Lists!

Lists- You know those things that haunt you at night and when you wake up in the morning... while you're in the shower and even at the grocery store?
Yeah my life is full of them. We're getting ready to move and there is SO much to do. There are lists in my head, on paper, on the notice board, you name it and I've got one near by.
There are lists about things that need to get done (some how I can NEVER seem to get this totally empty), lists about things I need to pack, things to do with the kids, and those lists of the everyday chores that I must complete in a day.
So one would ask why I'd be blogging when I could be crossing off at least one thing on my list and I would reply with the fact that I'm procrastinating! I DON'T want to do any of it and this seems like something much for fun to occupy my time. Here's hoping I get some motivation sometime soon! For now I'm going to be an ostrich and stick my head into my pillow or the computer.

Good Luck

From the Computer of Jasmin-

I would like to send out BEST wishes and good luck to my partner in crime, Lori! She is undergoing shoulder surgery tomorrow and will be forced to sit on her bum and not do yoga or cook or much of anything besides watch TV and read. For some this would be a vacation, but for Lori and I it is close to torture! So sending best wishes and all of my laziness your way Lori!

Kitchen Blunders

From the Computer of Jasmin-

I know we all have a story or two of mishaps in the kitchen. Like my mom forgetting to thaw the turkey the first Thanksgiving my now husband had with my family. I will never forget him trying to help. For some reason it involved him sticking his entire hand inside of the turkey. Hmm, not quite sure why. Might have to revisit that scenario with him. I am NOT a fan of touching meat and have not eaten pork or beef in over 18 years so I was a little grossed out by my boyfriend's entire arm inside of the turkey. In fact when we met I hardly had any meat in the house. I will say since marriage I can now make my own spaghetti sauce AND cook chicken (even TOUCH it) and I have cooked fish twice! Small steps! Though I am proud of myself I'm forgetting the time I made the turkey burgers and served them medium rare... Yup he cooked them for a few months after that:)

Anyway...

This past week or maybe it was two ago now, hmm, yes I believe two, my two little kiddos and I drove up to MI. Now this is a 10.5  hour trip on a good day with a Huge bladder but anyway long story short I wanted to pack us breakfast so we wouldn't have to waste time eating at a restaurant and could preserve the quality of food my little loves ingested. (Okay this is not the part where I should mention that I hand fed my year old animal crackers in his car seat or that I did, GASP, do a drive through at McDonald's!- with a horse trailer). Okay desperate times call for desperate measures! But I started off with lofty intentions of packing breakfast.

After making a large batch of homemade whole wheat pancakes I put them into a baggie for the road. At our stop for breakfast we pulled out the previous mentioned pancakes and started to snack. They were AWFUL! Yes terrible. I'm sensitive to baking soda and my kids are pretty easy going with my cooking but even they wouldn't touch them. So PB&J for breakfast it was.

This past week I decided to give the pancakes another go since the kids love pancakes and I love that they're whole wheat. Yes again same problem. After two mess ups I finally READ the directions. Not just glanced them over like I guess I had been doing. Yup baking POWDER not soda the recipe called for.

 Mom- 0 Kitchen- 1

People say the darndest things...

From the Computer of Jasmin-

You know those times when someone says something and you just stare absently at them. Drool gathering at your feet while you comprehend the absurdity, genius, or stupidity of another humans comments. Well I'd like to share one.

This past weekend the family and I headed to the outlet malls for some retail therapy. While we were walking around the dreaded playground came into sight. And yes my little darling could not WAIT to go roll around in the sand. Okay I'll be honest she did not roll around in it and playground aren't dreaded just ones with sand that get everywhere! Back to the story. So as I mentioned rolling around in the sand is quite appealing to many children. Yes there were more than a few rolling in it!

One particular mother when to discuss this behavior and possible "treasure" her child had found. Yes we can all guess what treasure was found in a SAND pit. Well after the mother did a little screech and went to sit on the bench her little darling decided to bury herself in the sand.

Now my little lady is not one to get too dirty, thank goodness, but she is very interested in other little kiddos and their behavior. While walking to see the above child she accidentally stepped on the little girls legs. Okay guys they were UNDER the sand and for a 2.5 year old that means they aren't there. Being the wonderful mother I am, ahhh hem, I immediately grabbed my lovely lady and explained the situation to her. She apologized to the other child. The other child, obviously offended decided to run to her mom (the screecher who was now parked on the bench) and dramatize the situation. I also approached the mother to say we were sorry. The mother just looked at her little darling standing there covered in sand whining and said, "Are you dying? Did someone try to abduct you? Are you bleeding? Do we need to go home?" After a few pregnant seconds of hesitation the little girl, opened mouthed, replied, "No." and ran off to play.

Yes ladies and gentlemen I'm not sure which category this would fall under (absurd, genius, or stupid) but definitely one to remember:)

~Jasmin

Welcome

Two friends here. Friends from college and friends for life. However life and distance makes friendship a challenge sometimes. This blog is an effort to help us to maintain our friendship, share stories, and vent. Here it goes.

From the computer of Lori-
What happens when a mom of two toddlers and a mom of the world's biggest cat (Named Beef- I, Jasmin added that:) ) join forces to start a blog? Stay tuned to find out!!!
But don't stay tuned while holding your breath- we kinda have our hands full!!

From the computer of Jasmin-
Yes we both have busy lives and interesting things happening every day. This is our pledge: When we find the time and desire we'll share some of our crazy stories and adventures.