I’m irritated as hell! Once again the weekend has turned into one looooooooooooooooooong taxi service. Tonight I have to pick up my daughter in Long Beach and my son in Chino. Tomorrow we have to pick up another son who has the misfortune of working on Thanksgiving and he’s also in Chino and so another trip to Chino and also to Costa Mesa to pick up another child who can’t come to our Thanksgiving till after he’s had Thanksgiving with his mother. I’d wait and do it all at once but then the son who’s not working will miss out on some of the Thanksgiving festivities. Then we have to go back to Chino and Costa Mesa to take the kids home. Then Saturday is my 2nd cousin’s birthday party and that’s out in Riverside so once again we have to make the trek to pick up all the kids in Pomona, Chino, Yorba Linda and Costa Mesa and drive out to Riverside. It’s an overnight party so then we have to go from Riverside back to Brea and in the morning from Brea to Riverside to Pomona to Chino to Yorba Linda to Costa Mesa to drop them all off and then back to Brea again. This weekend was supposed to be our no-kid weekend when all the kids are at our ex’s. It was supposed to be the weekend we spend together relaxing and enjoying our time together since we have so little of it. And of course Doug is working on Friday so I get to do the schlepping for that day.  I resent that Doug wants to do the birthday party thing as it’s another huge pain in the ass and because it was supposed to be our weekend together. It’s a bigger pain in the ass than the Thanksgiving driving. I’m also irritated because we had all the kids last weekend and while I enjoy the kids its one HUGE noise fest and it seriously tries my patience by the end of the weekend. I need my weekends to myself inbetween our kid-weekends. 5 kids all in the same room for two and a half days, one of them with the volume control of “LOUD” only drives me crazy. Add in the bickering that goes on between the brothers…………Fuck me is it over yet?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t resent my kids, I resent not being able to relax on a weekend that I thought I was going to…a long weekend at that.


and . 

Twilight = Meh

Frankly I thought it was cheesey and was mighty disappointed. The female main character was so cold, why would a good looking guy fall for her? I wanted to put her away in the freezer with the icecream, not hope that she survived the attack. There were very few special effects, the movie had a lot of potential but fell waaaaaaaaaay short of what it could have been. I won’t comment on the storyline as not all of you have seen it, but I sure won’t be lining up to see the sequel!!

I’m so ready to wring my kids’ necks!! ARGH!!! Every two weeks we have all of them together and every two weeks they thrash the house and every two weeks they go home like they’ve been on vacation and every two weeks I have to clean up the f***ing mess!!!! The older boys cleaned the dishes and when I went to put them away after they’d dried, they were so greasy that one slipped out of my hands and broke. This morning I went to clean the toilet and found dried on toilet paper and feces stuck to the brush. YUKKKKKKKKK!!! One of the older ones clogged the toilet yesterday and he was probably trying to clean up his mess but WHO LEAVES TOILET PAPER STUCK TO THE TOILET BRUSH???? The problem is that they leave before I find this stuff. I’ve tried talking to them, I’ve tried yelling at them, I’ve tried showing them how it’s done. Golly gee, I guess next time he needs to be driven somewhere for a date, I won’t be available!!! DAMN IT ALL TO HELL!!! That’s just gross!!!

Most of you have heard about the terrible fires that were burning in Southern California. Our house was a half a mile from those fires in Brea. We voluntarily evacuated on Sunday morning due to really poor air quality more than anything.  We have a son in Yorba Linda that was under a mandatory evacuation and was safely moved to Costa Mesa. Doug was working on Saturday night and I thought I was going to have to evacuate myself that evening but fortunately the winds moved the fire in another direction and I didn’t have to. People have asked me if I was scared and I really can’t say that I was. Tense and alert, yes, but not scared. I put gas in my van, gathered up all our pet crates, pet food, litter boxes, heat lamps, leashes, put my purse and an overnight bag in the van and was ready to go at a moment’s notice. In watching the news I saw the people were packing up as much as they could; pictures, documents, clothing, etc. I looked around and thought of all the precious things to me and all I really knew I couldn’t replace was my pets. The rest is all material and quite frankly I would have appreciated it if my bills had burned! hehehehe I think being so close to death myself this year helped put it all in perspective. You can’t take it with you when you’re dead anyway, so is it really worth anything? We had alread lost everything once this year so to possibly loose it again didn’t bother me. I’ve learned how quickly it can all go and am reminded that what I have really isn’t mine anyway, it’s just on loan to me for this life time. The only thing I would have truly missed was my kid’s baby pictures, but they were burried so deeply in the garage that it would have made it harder to get out. On Sunday morning I woke up and had a hard time breathing and had a splitting headache. It smelled so badly of smoke that it felt like we were outside and I knew it couldn’t be good for any of us so we packed up our German Shepard, Black Lab, 2 cats, kitten and 2 snakes and headed for Seal Beach where my boss lives. She’s out of town and let us use her place till the air cleared. So on the other side we are, happy and healthy and once again thankful.

Trixie, my new kitten, has taken to trying to nurse on my neck at night. I usually detach her and set her back on the floor. Apparently last night I was so soundly asleep that I didn’t feel her on my neck! ACK!!!!

A year ago:

I couldn’t walk by myself
I couldn’t roll over in bed without help
I had a 15 inch open wound on my belly
I had chemo and radiation to look forward to
I gasped in pain with every movement
My future was uncertain and bleak
I was medicated beyond coherant thought
I couldn’t participate in any of the holidays
I lost my home, my cars, my children, my pets and my comfort
I couldn’t hold my children tight
I couldn’t tell my children it would be alright……….

A year ago has gone and I am so thankful to be alive and here for my children and my husband!

THANK YOU!!

This is my new baby, Trixie. We found her on Halloween. Can you imagine finding a black cat on Halloween? She was under the hood of Doug’s truck, on top of the manifold just a crying away. It took her awhile to get used to people and I think she’s ferral. After an extremely loud meowing session, she straddled Doug’s foot and promtly peed on it while the box sat unused next to her. I had to show her how to use a litter box! I set a shaking kitten into the box, took my index finger and dug a whole in the litter…..yes it was clean… The scratching sound got her attention and instinct took over. She’s been good ever since but I don’t think she’d ever been around people because she had no idea what that box was for. Now she plays with everything is fearless to almost everything and is happy and healthy. I’m grateful for my gift!

Everyone concentrates on the problems we’re having in this country lately — illegal immigration, hurricane recovery, alligators attacking people in Florida …  

 …. not me — I concentrate on solutions for the problems — it’s a win-win situation.
 
 * Dig a moat the length of the Mexican border.
 * Send the dirt to New Orleans to raise the level of the levees.
 * Put the Florida alligators in the moat along the Mexican border.
  
Any other problems you would like for me to solve today?

I’m so tired these days, I can’t stand it. I’m physically lethargic in that my body just doesn’t have any energy. It’s a struggle not to fall asleep at my desk day in and day out. I’m mentally exhausted as well. I find myself wanting to take the easy way out and not think things through. I know stress and diet are major contributers and I’m thinking I might be anemic as well. I also wonder if I’m just all used up from trying to heal from the chemo and radiation. I was drinking coffee in the mornings, but my stomach was revolting and I gave up Diet Pepsi as a thank you to the Gods when I came home from the hospital without an ostomy but now I feel like I’m crawling through every moment and every space of time till I can get back in my bed again. It seems like such a long crawl.