Baa, Baa Black Sheep

Have you any wool?  No?  How about a lamb, got any tasty little bitty sheep morsels for me?

I kind of hate that I like lamb, it took me forever to get over the heebie jeebies of eating a cute little baby animal, but I persevered and by golly, it's yummy.  I will NOT eat snake or eel or geoduck (puke) but I have managed to envision a happy, frolicking fluffy lamb jumping and scampering and suddenly POOF it's in little lamb heaven and who am I to let his body go to waste?  Ok, I'm not totally that naive, but I do hope they had a good life, short though it may have been.  Fine, fine, no more lamb talk...

I saw this recipe on the Rachael Ray show the other day and thought it looked delish.  I'm a sucker for soups, especially those with a broth base.  We have a ton of ground beef, but it is very lean and not full of flavor, so I thought "MmmHMMMM...I bet some LAMB would be perfect in there!".  I don't have a black sheep to barter with so I ran to Publix and got some and made the meatballs with double the meat (and almost double everything else, really)  I should have doubled the feta as well, but I was still reeling from my wussy workout and not thinking clearly.  FWIW, a low fat feta works better, the cheese gets all gooey and melty and by the time you bake and then reheat them in the soup, the meatballs won't have much cheese left inside if you go full fat version.  Save that for when it won't ooze out and get wasted.  That would be a travesty.  I also skipped the pasta and used the smallest amount of breadcrumbs I thought I could get away with, trying to limit gluten but not going completely GF.

So now I have a double batch of meatballs, half went into the soup and the other half will be frozen until I decide what to do with them.  Which will probably be more of the same soup.  The lamb was very subtly evident, it totally helped with the needed fat/moisture of the meatballs and added a little depth of flavor.

 Yummo!

And so later today, I was feeling feisty and had been reading about syncing my flash and playing with rear vs. front curtain.  I wanted to get a photo showing a blur of motion and freezing the subject at the peak of movement ie. using rear curtain flash.  It didn't go so well.  BUT...this photo totally freaked us out.  As soon as I take a photo of Zach in which he has willingly been forced to partcipate, he demands to see the image on the camera screen.  It's small, so I immediately zoom in, and had to scroll over to see his form.  But as I scrolled ALL the way over, the ghostly figure in the corner was suddenly in the camera screen and we both jumped and shrieked.  Way cool mom and son freak out bonding moment ♥

I still need to figure out how to make this work better, but for now I keep looking at this and giggling.

Just keep on...

whining  swimming...I'm trying, Dory, I really am.  But I hope you have a few life preservers somewhere close by.

The past several weeks have been harsh in regards to this whole nerve crappola and sitting at the computer makes it worse.  Holding the camera makes it worse.  Trying to sit at the computer and upload photos, resize, attempt poorly to edit them, etc.  And it makes me so ANGRY that this THING I have no name for, no expectations for, is taking over every damn thing that I want to do.  Even cooking is rough...chopping veggies, whisking/stirring, lifting pans and skillets.  Le sigh.  I really just want to cry because as frustrating and annoying as it is for me, it's affecting my family and that #$!^!&@ pisses me off.  Sorry kids, mommy's too tired and cranky to be much good today.  No, Owen, you can't lay on mommy's arm right now... No, Zach, I can NOT play cards with you, I can't sit at the table like that or shuffle and my neck hurts too much to hold my head up and blah blah blah.  It's not just the pain, either, the pain is just pain, certainly not the worst I've ever felt.  But non-stop unreachable nerve pains and sensations like being strangled are exhausting, Not to mention the days I wake up feeling like the very air around me is a thick fog and I have to fight my way through it just to stand up and walk.  All. day. long.  So sometimes I'm not very pleasant to be around.

Today isn't as bad, so I'm trying AGAIN. I truly believe physical activity helps but finding that magic window where I won't exacerbate whatever's happening and actually HELP instead is tricky. I am terrified of overdoing it physically b/c that seems to bring on big 'flares' of whatever this is, and 'cutting back' is really hard for me because I'm used to pushing myself whenever I DO get active, I guess to make up for the previous lazy days.  I was in great shape several years ago, I'd go to the gym and crank out a couple of hours of cardio and weights and boom, looking good, feeling awesome.  If I missed a few days, I'd return knowing it would hurt, I'd pay for it, but I'd bounce back in no time flat. Now if I try to pull that crap I'm down for the count and I hate hate HATE it.  I miss the old me, the fun me, the energetic me.  But there's no denying any longer that I can't do it, simply can NOT try to pull a stunt like that...unless maybe I spend a year building up to it.

I haven't been on my bike in forever (yeah, last stunt was biking 20 miles 2 days in a row, put me out of commission for a couple of weeks it seems) and today I was eyeing my bike, and eyeing the breeze outside...awesome day for a ride except that I know the ride back would probably be too much as I'm totally out of shape/endurance again and riding against the wind is more than I'm up for right now -- it strains my neck even though it's a hybrid bike, gotta get the neck happy again first.  I'd been doing so well but I know a few weeks off means basically starting at step 1 all over again.  So instead I dusted off the Hate Machine and did 30 min of elliptical striding.  I feel like such a wuss, but I did it instead of sitting on the couch and crying into my coffee.  And since I didn't kill myself on the bike, I should have enough energy left over to do some laundry and hey, maybe even cook dinner!  And above all try like hell to keep a smile on my face for the rest of the day.  Because my boys are worth it...all three of them.

Anyway, here are a few photos I've taken recently, paying the price to get them here.  Be glad you weren't around for the fallout ;)  Kev's probably ready to hit me over the head and knock me out for a few days, hoping I'll wake up all better ♥

We had a nice time getting out of the house a few evenings ago to have dinner with some friends...I hope she doesn't mind my posting the photo below ...I purposely took my most lightweight lens which isn't the sharpest one I have, but I just couldn't stand the thought of holding the heavy camera, so it's not the greatest shot.  But I love the feel of it.  And the boys of course doing the obligatory jumps off the small boat at Squid Lips :)

Be careful what you wish for

How many times have we been warned about THAT?

I was a strange kid, or at least I felt strange most of the time.  And I wondered strange things, at least I think they were strange, although isn't that what kids do?

I distinctly remember this one time, I must have been about four years old because I remember standing next to the dining room table in our townhouse in Maryland, and I picked up my little brother's yellow dump truck.  Back then toys weren't cheap plastic, this little thing was pretty daggone heavy for a small toy.  But I needed to know something, so I held it up and dropped it right back to the ground.  The loud crash startled everyone, and of course there was a version of "What the hell are you doing??!" although my parents never said 'hell'.  I replied "I wanted to see if I could see it in mid-air" which was exactly what I was doing.  Somehow I had realized that an object up high, when let go, would be in transit through the air for a period of time, no matter how brief, before it hit the ground.  Even though it seemed to automatically be on the ground the very instant you let it loose, I just KNEW it didn't work that way and I wanted to see if I could capture that magical mid-air view with my eyes, and keep a mental snapshot of something appearing to float.  But sadly, it didn't work out very well.  Just a loud crash.  I am pretty sure I tried it a few times before they took it away from me.

Another thing I wondered about was falling asleep.  You go to bed, you close your eyes, it might take a few minutes and you might get in trouble for whispering with your sister or kicking your brother, but eventually it always happened...suddenly you are waking up and  you don't have ANY memory of falling asleep.  How does it happen?  Why can't we feel when we are entering dreamland?  I wanted to KNOW how it was, like opening a door and passing through it where sleep occurs once the door is shut again, with you on the other side.  Why couldn't I experience that moment of passage?

And that, my friends, is something I never should have wished for.  Because now I know and while it is indeed super cool and all that jazz, it happens because I am fighting so hard to get to sleep, and experiencing that transition means I have been awake for way too much of my night and the coming day is sure to be long and full of foggy moments.  And the absolute worst part about it...I'm lying there, with the typical brain spin of thoughts going like a Ferris wheel on crack and occasionally a thought flies off of it and I travel that tangent for a bit, but then back to the spinning wheel I go and I play out conversations and make lists and think about must-dos for the next day ad nauseum and then suddenly, I realize I'm in a more relaxed state.  I'm not burning 100 calories by flipping over every 2 minutes   My body feels calm.  And that excites me because I know SLEEP is coming!  Which zaps away the relaxation.  But I get there again, and then my mental conversations are actually happening, I'm not just thinking about them.  And I'm having conversations with multiple people, but they are each in their own separate bubble, different bubbles of movies that I'm experiencing all floating around, with a background noise of all these people talking like a movie theater before the main feature starts.  And I can zoom in on any bubble and hear just that one over the low rumble, and then zoom it out and choose another one, living a snippit of this one and then that one and then "Oh FINALLY!  I'm falling asleep!" and boom, a bang of reality.  Back awake.

Now if I could just figure out how not to get so excited, I'd probably get some sleep.

Karmen seems to be doing a pretty good job of it, though.

Now this one here, she's probably feeling a bit like I do when reality flashes me awake, like my camera just did to her.  

Owen's turn

I have had two posts back to back about Zach, essentially, so to try and be a little bit fair I need to post about Owen.  They'll probably never read this and never care, but one thing I have learned in my life is to be prepared because the last thing you expect is the thing that will be your downfall.

I love you, Owen ♥ you are my awesome little Ozone.  Although after last night's bath and all the soap you dissolved in the water your nickname is now Soapzone.  I love that you squeeze my neck in the mornings when I wake you up and you threaten to never let me go.  You are an amazing reader and artist and thinker and dancer and singer and I can't wait to see what else you will be as you continue to grow.

For the readers, Owen has recently given up on our karate plans and taken his freedom to choose and landed in dance class.  I think this will be a perfect fit, but as always, only time will tell.

And in case you are Kevin #2 reading this, I reiterate, I did NOT pose this photo.  If I had, he wouldn't be sitting square in the middle, I'd probably try for a creative seating and fail miserably.  He actually did sit still on his own, playing his LeapPad.  This kid loves puzzles of all sorts.  I should video him playing with the Perplexus.

Dear future self...

...somewhere between 12am and 2am, you are going to need this *replaces empty toilet paper roll*

Parts of aging really suck, especially that middle-of-the-night pee run, which never went away after I gave birth to Owen.  I'm pretty sure I won't make a full 8 hrs of sleep for the remainder of my life.

Something I wish I could do is share my knowledge and experience with my boys.  I'm sure all parents feel this way, and the frustration is beyond words for me.  Of course we preach and scold and praise and do all manner of things to encourage or discourage certain behaviors but the bottom line is that they can't see the potential pitfalls of the future as well as we can and grabbing and shaking them certainly won't work.  I know for me, personally, I need to work better on seeing and utilizing the natural consequences that result from behaviors or habits, so they can see and learn from their own experience (with guidance, of course). I personally think Zach would benefit from more practice in several areas of his life, one evidenced by his open arm stance in these photos...not fully guarded or blocked.  But screaming it from the rooftops won't make it happen, he needs to learn the value of practice for himself.  I'm fairly certain his sparring class will make this one pretty evident...

 I find that avoiding sheltering is probably the hardest part of parenting...it can be difficult figuring out when to speak up, when to lay low, and what advice to take when it's given by so many 'well-wishers'.  However, threatening in a shouting voice to 'call your sensei and tell him how disrespectful you are!' is really not the role of a non-parent.  And if you are a parent, calling a sensei to deal with your poorly behaved child is pitiful parenting.  Discussing concerns with involved adults can be helpful, in that I don't disagree, and involving a karate instructor who is willing and eager to impart wisdom and teaching could be invaluable.  But don't threaten my kid.  I wrote earlier about not speaking up when someone is upsetting you, but that doesn't mean shouting threats at a kid is the way to go about it.  Had the aforementioned person simply stated "It really makes me feel disrespected when you don't answer me", I'm sure Zach would have responded much more favorably and I wouldn't have been seething inside.  Sheltering from that perspective is A-OK and necessary, in my opinion.  I only wish I had done a better job of it.  And as you can see, his sensei (now Kyoshi) is more than ready and proud to promote him ♥  Way to go on the brown belt, Zach!

These hands are on FIAAAAHHHHH...

Ok, that's cheesy, I admit.  Certainly not as catchy as singing about Obama.  But the song IS catchy, which is why it's now in my title.  I am, indeed, living up to my alter ego as Captain Obvious.

But my hands are on fire, not in the good blogging way, or the good vacuuming way or even the good laundry way.  I did get the dishes, done, though.  Le sigh, the fire of my hands is an internal burn, a deep smoldering heat with occasional sparks catching me off guard.   I don't know why, but the short version is I have some problem with my nerves and to be frank it's really pissing me off today.  Sometimes they burn, sometimes I feel ice tingles jumping around, sometimes it's a numbing tingle, sometimes I just feel a sensation long after it should be gone.  And it's not just my hands, but my hands are definitely the worst when it comes to nerve issues.

I'm not on here to whine about it, though, I do enough of that in real life.  I'm only thinking about it b/c of the photo I'm about to post.  I love to read, it was my other life when I was growing up, my true escape, traveling to other lands, other times, meeting other people in other dimensions.  I miss it.  I don't do it much anymore, although not for the obvious reasons of being a mom, needing to cook, clean and transport little people to various places (ok, that sounds wrong...I don't cook little people)...I don't do it b/c it hurts my %$&!! hands and wrists to hold my nook, and my eyes are going south faster than I can keep up with, so it's an exhausting strain to read, leaving me with blurry eyes for hours later.  Even with reading glasses.  I have so many books saved, waiting, but I think about sitting down with a glass of wine and just the nook and all I can conjure up is how exhausted it will make me.  How pathetic is that?

Zachary loves to read.  I love that he loves it--he gets to go where all the magic is, be an adventurer, feel the sorrow and the joy and the fear and the anticipation that a good author will provide.  All he asked for this Christmas was books.  He is just such an awesome kid, and I am so proud of the young man he's becoming.  Although keeping up with his chores would be nice.

Krazy Karmen is his true pal, she snuggles up with him every night.  I put up with her for that alone ♥

Monsters need love, too.

Happy Valentine's Day!  I don't have great pics of this but I am going to post anyway and even *gasp* attempt to pin it to pinterest.  We'll see how that goes.  This old dog is finding it harder and harder to learn new tricks.  Or maybe it's just b/c I put them off until I ...oh wait, I need to get that laundry out of the washer before it starts to smell!...

Where was I?  Ahh yes.  VD.  My dear child Owen had to bring a 'mailbox' to school today to collect valentines.  This is his first year of getting the chance to go all out but I have been feeling rather craptastic and I didn't get my usual burst of 'oohh let's get ready for cute Valentine crafty stuff' energy, no photos, no supplies, nada.  Briefly discussed an idea with him and ran to Target, coming back with ONE item to work with, and only b/c I thought they were cute.  Had no idea what to do with them, though.  Paper straws.

Owen tends to think outside the box, so rather than go all 'pink hearts! glitter! red flowers! Valentines!' he decided to make a monster whose mouth would be the opening for valentines to fit into.  Dh said we had plenty of boxes in the garage, but of course come crunch time, there really weren't any.  I spied a box up on top of the freezer that (upon inspection) had been there for over two years (wtf? it was the box that held the bonsai I'd bought my uncle one year for Christmas) and it was a little large but it would work.  I drew a rough set of eyes and a mouth, got the ok from Owen and sawed a u-shape for the mouth.  Then I sawed a door opening in the back for retrieval of items (those old steak knives come in handy).  Then I covered it all up (old dusty box, remember, with packing and shipping info on it) with brown packing paper (hey, it was the only solid/plain type paper I had) and then re-cut the previously sawed places.  FYI, Elmer's glue is better for gluing that paper down, we went through a whole glue stick and THEN some.

In the bottom of my kid-crafts drawer I found some pipe cleaners all bent out of shape, some foam sheets from a bday party (when Zach turned 3 I believe), left over sparklies and glue from our Christmas ornament craft (and I must say that Beacon's Ornament glue is the bomb diggity of glues) and some mini craft sticks.  I asked dh if we had an old drawer pull somewhere, surely we must, we are certifiable pack rats so he went looking.  Owen and I twisted the pipe cleaners around our fingers for curly hair.  A tiny slit on each side of the box to fit a mini craft stick, and two on top, with glue to help hold them in place.  We carefully doused the ends of the curlicues with glue and lined them up on the top of the box (Owen was very particular about the color pattern). It had to sit and dry for a bit so the pipe cleaner hair wouldn't fall off, and during that time Owen glued some blue buttons onto white foam circles for eyes (three of them!) and decided a bit of sparkle in the center of each would be even better.  He sneaked and glued the eyes in place when I wasn't looking, causing one of the curls to fall off.  Oops!  Stay away from the table, Owen!

Anyway, once it was all dried enough to maneuver a little, I got to use my PAPER STRAWS which we globbed with glue and slid over the mini craft sticks.  I got my vday hearts in, though, check out those hands. Two more for antennae on top,complete with scrounged up pom pom balls.  Dh found a wooden drawer pull, Owen turned it red with the help of a Sharpie (thank goodness I let him go shirtless for that one).  We punched a hold in the mouth flap and screwed it in.  Still missing something...jagged teeth!  More white foam cut outs, more glue...voila.

(See?  He really did need those teeth)

But the finishing touch was ALL Owen.

"Mom, you need to write 'Feed me valentines' down here!"

Oh, yeah, that actually is exactly what it needs!  But you write it.

So he did.

I think it's the best Valentine's Day mailbox EVER.

....and now that I have the mouthy monster back in hand, I took a few 'real' photos, as much as you can call them real.  I REALLY need to learn to tilt the camera the other way, while I'm at it.  Everybody lean to the right...

Looks like he got a little scribble love while at school.  I heard he was a huge hit!

I inserted the little craft sticks into slits cut into the side, then generously applied glue to the inside of the paper straw when I was ready to slide it on. Once it was all dry, I use another tiny craft stick and glued it to the back of the heart/hand, and then glued the other end to the inside of the straw.  Viola!  Well, I don't think he could play the viola with only two rather chubby digits like that...

Curly hair!  Crazy easy.  

Back view of antennae and hair.  Same technique to get the straws on top of the head.  Sorry, photo is oof, somebody was antsy to go digging inside for mad vday loot.

Oops!  Who's that sneaking into my frame?

Oh yeah...the opening in the back?  The one to more easily reach in and retrieve valentines?  Well, apparently when you do that, you are making the monster poop.  Best part of the whole creation.

So it's been a while...

... and maybe it will be a while yet again.  In fact, if I were you and you had the opportunity, I'd put big money on that bet.  But for here, today, I'm trying this again.

I can't believe the date on the last post.  July 15.  We were gearing up for a trip to the Keys and I didn't even mention it?  Wow.  It was a sucktastic trip, though.  The boys had a decent time but I cried for most of it.  The first morning we were out on the road, in a hotel room, an early phone call gave me the news that my dear Granny had died.  She had been sick, but not THAT sick, at least not the way the doctors were treating her.  She died July 19th, just a few hours into the early morning past the 1 year anniversary of the passing of her soul mate, Boom-pa.   He died on July 18th and honestly, I didn't realize how much she was suffering without him.  She missed him so, even though he'd been bedridden and barely able to even talk for the longest while.

I flew home for the funeral, that was so hard.  That HOME.  The truest home I had ever known, it was always there and always full of THEM and their love and warmth.  It needed to be emptied and sold.  It was overwhelmingly gut wrenching at times, and then suddenly a rush of warm happy bubbles came spilling out in those tears as we'd uncover a bit of love history we hadn't even seen before.  Finding old notes and love letters that Granny kept for soooo many years, even my old letters I'd written to her back as far as age 7, maybe even earlier.  She loved us so much. She also didn't shy away from telling you something if she felt you needed to hear it.  But she always knew how to respect me and my boundaries and the boundaries of my family...if that meant taking me away privately to say her piece quietly, so be it. I learned a hard lesson last year about people who don't tell you when something's bothering them and instead let it fester and blow up into a hugely disproportionate bomb of nastiness, while walking away from you and out of your life, your kids' lives, forever.  I still feel the shrapnel from that, and perhaps it was one more reason why losing Granny was so hard...she taught me how true family love works and for that I am eternally grateful.

A note we found from Boom-pa, to his beloved.

Forever and always, together again.  Miss you both so much.