Good fortune

I have been in a pretty grumpy mood the past few days, mostly due to our not so good money situation and all of the crap with dd's father. Yesterday I had some good fortune.

Our next door neighbors have been in the process of moving away to Utah. The mother and the youngest daughter left over spring break. The older daughter (our babysitter) left after school let out. The father has stayed behind to do some fixing up on the house and stuff. His last day of work is at the end of next week and he will be leaving soon after that. Over the weekend he stopped at my friend Nancy's house to let her know that he did not want to take his food with him and asked that we go over to spit it between us. I have been over there a few times before but I was completely shocked over how much food there really was. I wish I could have taken a picture of what I brought home because it was just unbelievable. Once we finished splitting it I had to get my car from next door and fill the trunk with all of mine. And my trunk was completely full. Dh and I were sweating after we carried it all in. We got the meat into the freezer and I left the non perishables until this morning. It took well over an hour to get it all put away. My pantry was so full that I had to empty a cabinet in the laundry room to finish putting it all up. It will cut down on the amount of groceries I need to buy next month tremendously so we will be able to save that much more.

He also has a bunch of wood and a few cabinets in his garage. He said he was going to take a little with him but would sort through it and let me have what I wanted from the rest. These people have been the best neighbors and I am so sad to see them go. I feel guilty for taking all of this from them when there are so many people in much more need than I am. I plan to take about 10% of what I got and donate it to a food pantry. I am also going to ask him if we could mow his yard until the house sells to make up for all they have shared with us.

Not much else going on here. I went out this morning and bought ds the few school supplies that I didn't already have here for him. I can't find his bookbag though so I need to launch an search for it. I also forgot that I need to get some lunch bags for him. He carries both breakfast and lunch to school because he will not eat most of the food that is served.

Five more days til the tonsillectomy. I am going to talk to my friend Natalie this afternoon so we can figure out what kind of homeopathics I can take to speed my healing. She did say that I can start to take arnica now to prepare for it.

Eleven more days until school starts. The first day will be a half day and there is no school on the 9th and 10th. I think it is dumb to only have school for 2 1/2 days on the first week but whatever. J's birthday is on the 24th and I plan to have his speech evaluated as close as possible to that day. Once he gets the evaluation done he will be able to get an IEP and start preschool. He will go to the same preschool that B went to. It is 4 days a week for 3 hours a day. I know that being around other kids will help him with so much, especially the anger issues he is starting to pick up from his brother.

Ugh! I am pretty sure the memory card on my digital camera is shot. Whenever I take a pic and try to upload it my computer tells me it is in an unsupported file format. Same when I try to review it on the camera. I formatted it on the camera and again on the computer and it still does the same thing. Lucky for me, my SIL works at the photo center at Sprawlmart. A lot of people leave their cards behind in the machine. They save them for quite a while but after about a year or so they throw them out. She said she would send me one later this week.

Yesterday I had my pre-op appointment for my tonsillectomy. I have to go back on Friday and have some blood work done. Tuesday is the big day. It is not until 10:30 so hopefully the ILs will be able to get here before I have to go and we won't have to take the kids along.

Once I get better from the surgery I will probably be going out to find a job. We have spent most of our savings and it is just not a good position to be in. I hope I can find something where I can work around dh's hours and just work until around Christmas. Bleh.

I really suck at keeping up with blogging this summer. I just got back from bringing dd home yesterday so hopefully I can start to blog a little more regularly. Dd's father pulled a bunch of shit this morning that I really only feel comfortable discussing with my closest friends. I will say that I am getting a new custody order that will better explain everything that was not taken care of in the first order. It is great to be home without the stress looming over me like a big black cloud.

I have a week and a day before I get my tonsils yanked out and I plan to enjoy it to the fullest. I haven't really been dieting but I have been staying clear of foods that make me eat like I haven't had a meal in a week. This week I will be enjoying some of my favorite things like homemade mac and cheese and lasagna.

My nephew had his tonsils out on Friday. On Saturday he was doing pretty well but I was talking to my SIL yesterday and it seems that he didn't have such a good day yesterday. My brother and SIL are having to make him drink so that he does not get dehydrated. Which scares me even more for mine because I will not have someone to do that for me.

And to further how much I suck, I typed this yesterday and never posted it!

Garden update

Back in May I made some raised bed and planted my first garden at this house. I am still pretty new to gardening and apparently not too good at it. I recently noted that some of my plants are just not growing. My lettuce outright died, well over a month ago. I planted more but it didn't sprout. I wrote it off to the birds eating it. So here is how things are going now.

Beans

They look pretty decent here but they just aren't getting bigger. There are a couple of plants that have sprouts but people around here are already picking beans. Hmph.












Broccoli

The bigger one in the back has grown some but the rest have not grown much at all.












Peppers

The banana pepper (back left) just died outright. The green thing you see in it's place is a tomato my mom tried to transplant. The jalepenos are just as small as when I bought them.













Tomatoes
The tomatoes are doing better than anytime else and I will actually get tomatoes this year, yay. I even have a few Romas that are starting to turn red, even if they are a little small.

The cherry tomato is an entirely different story. This is the runt plant. There are a few branches at the top, which have sprouted baby tomatoes but it is not nearly the size it should be.

I also have onions planted in another bed and they are doing decently.

My FIL came over a few days ago and I asked him to have a look and see what he though. He told me that it looks like the soil does not have enough nutrients and that I should put fertilizer in it after gardening season is over. I can't lose hope that this is as big as it will get though so yesterday I stopped at Lowe's and got some organic plant food. I mixed it into the soil last night and watered everything. Hopefully I will see some growth in the next week or two.

















































I also have a few cute pics of ds2 to share. Ds1 is away at MILs and ds2 has been extra sweet lately.


Here he is "sleeping" in the bottom drawer of my dresser.



Helping daddy work on his motorcycle.


And one from the sandbox. He saw me taking pictures outside so I had to take one of him too. I used an old patio umbrella and planted it this morning so they would have a sunshade and also hopefully keep the rain out since it never gets covered.

You can't quit being mom

Today has been a very hard day. B had a major tantrum in McDonalds today. We only went because it is his birthday. I was and am so incredibly upset and embarrassed. We came home and have been spending the afternoon doing regular house stuff, except ds was sent to his room so it was quiet. Dd and I baked a cake for ds' birthday. It had cooled and I frosted it. Dd and ds were decorating it together and I came to do an internet check in. Dd had been using it and in another tab she had a message between her and her dad on myspace up. In it she told him that today was ds' birthday and it would be just another day of her being ignored. I am so. fucking. over. it.

I have spent the entire summer running here, there and everywhere. I spend more money on gas in one month than I usually spend in 4 or more. I make sure to pick out movies that dd and I can watch together. I take her out at least once a week to do something special with just me. I take the boys out to places that I know B might have a tantrum so that she has something to do. I scoped out friends for her before she got here. I go out of my way to pick up the girl that lived next door to us in the old house to go to the waterpark with us so dd has a friend there. I barely have any time to myself, ever, because when I would usually take time to myself I spend it alone with her. I even get up early in the morning to have sex with my husband because she likes to stay up late. I bend over backwards to accommodate her and she is telling her dad that I am ignoring her.

Once I calmed down a little I confronted her very calmly. I told her that I saw the message and it hurt me very much to see that she was telling her dad that I was ignoring her when I had
been running on overtime for the past month and a half to do things especially to make her happy. I told her that she may not use my computer anymore and asked if she had anything she would like to say. She said no and I went outside to cry. Today sucks. At least ds2 is being pretty well behaved. And now I am off to make a special dinner that dd will eat that dh, ds2 and I will also eat instead of making a separate dinner for ds1, dd and the remaining 3 of us.

I'm glad it's today....

Because yesterday was a no good, fucked up day. The morning went well. Ds1 is doing a thing lately where he is trying to be as annoying as possible and he also fights with ds2 constantly but those are just minor annoyances. In the afternoon I even got the house cleaned up. Then dd went outside and stepped on a bee. She was crying and I am trying to take care of her. Ds1 is hovering over her saying "Check!" after every little thing I did. It might sound cute now but at the time it was really pissing me off. I ended up chasing him out and putting him in his room.

Dh came home and I headed off the the grocery store with my mega list in hand. As I get to the end of the store I ran into one of the moms I know from school. I am also friendly with her aunt but we haven't talked since school let out. She told me that her aunt's house burned down. I read about this story a few weeks ago but I had no idea it was my friend's house. She gave me her number and I called and talked to her on the drive home. My heart is just broken for her. They lost everything. Since it was the truck that exploded, the insurance from that is what is responsible for paying off the house. They cut a check for the remainder of the mortgage but the mortgage company wants to charge a huge prepayment penalty. On top of that, they found out their home owner's insurance did not cover contents so they will not be reimbursed for replacing anything in the house. Finally, the truck that blew up was her husband's business. He does have a new truck now but he was out of work until he could get it replaced. This lady is one of the nicest people you could ever meet. She doesn't deserve all of this. They do have a place to stay, clothes and her husband is back to work. Hopefully they are able to get a new home sometime soon. Thank goodness that she and her daughter were away at church camp at the time. They likely would have been injured in the fire if they had been at home. If you own your home, call your home owner's insurance company and make sure that you have coverage for contents!

After I got home and got the groceries put away I went back to my desk to work on my knitting a little. Only one of the boys was spinning around in my computer chair and I found all of it completely wrapped around the bottom of the chair. I was so upset over it that even dh was helping. Then the doorbell rang. Btw, I did untangle the knitting. One of the yarns broke but I did not lose any stitches.

At the door was my neighbor. They are older than us, probably around my parents age. A few months ago her mother came to live with her because she had terminal cancer. She came to tell us that her mother had died and asked if her family could park in front of our house. Dh answered the the door and told her she could park in the front and in the driveway. She left and he came back to the room where I was untangling my knitting to tell me. I immediately dropped my knitting, grabbed my keys and went outside. I went to my neighbor who was still outside. She is so completely devastated. I can't imagine what it is like to lose your mother. I told her that they can park anywhere they need to. I asked my other neighbor if I could park in his driveway because he does not use it. He offered to let them use his too so I am going to move it down to her house.

I also went to start dh's truck to move it and it is dead. I'm not sure what is going on there but he says he knows what is wrong. He doesn't work far from the house so he can have a co-worker pick him up if he needs to.

I made a big pasta salad and some cinnamon muffins for my neighbor and brought it over last night. I think I am also going to bring over a lemon cake tomorrow.

At the end of the day I was glad to go to bed and have that day over with. While nothing terrible happened to me I am greif stricken by what my friends and neighbors are having to go through. They have both suffered devastating losses. I wish to be a good friend and neighbor during this time to help them both through whatever they might need from me.

Being responsible is sucky.

My husband only gets paid once a month. We are also trying to be more budget conscious. In an attempt to do that I sat down today and figured out the bills for the month. Yuck. Then I did an inventory of the food we had on hand, a list of suppers that I can prepare for the month and a list of (hopefully) all of the food I will need to prepare those suppers, along with breakfasts, lunches and snacks. In the past few months I have gotten into the habit of running out for one or two things and spending like $40. I will have to go back to the store for things like milk and bread but if I buy enough food for everything else I can eliminate these quick trips 2 or 3 times a week.

Ds1's birthday is in one week, which he has reminded me of at least 20 times today. We are not doing very much. I will take him to the McDonalds with the playplace for lunch. It would not be my first choice but he really loves it and it is fairly inexpensive. I'll make a cake or cupcakes for us to have and sing happy birthday after dinner. I also have a couple of small gifts and am trying to resist the urge to buy more. School starts in a month and I am planning to have a party then so he can invite his friends.

Tomorrow dd and I are going to watch fireworks. I am debating if I should take her and maybe ds to the skating rink tonight. It costs $1 to get in. If I just go with her then we could skate together and she would not be bored. But ds1 likes to go too. Not sure. Summertime is so difficult because I feel like I need to do things to entertain the children constantly but I would really just be happy to stay home and knit. Plus that's cheaper. Until I start buying yarn at least.