Organizing Queen

Okay,  I just spent the last week and a half inventorying fall project donations at the kids school.  I as the chairman of the Art Masterpiece Committee, thought hey I'll just go in and catalog what comes in and then when a lesson has all the donations I'll just let the committee member know that they can fill the lesson packet.  Then I got to thinking well that's pretty dumb, I'm already going thru all the donations, I might as well just quickly bag up all the different class lesson as they come in.  SO, I went in every morning from the time of dropping the kids off at 7:40 and picking Ivan up at 11. 
I finally got the last packet filled yesterday.

But ofcourse being there all that time, and sometimes having that additional 30-45 minutes to kill until the little one gets out of kinder.  I decided to reorganize the art masterpiece cabinets, and label everything, and make check lists for all the committee members.  I even reorganized the master binder, which I foolishly thought would be better left at school so that the committee members could have access to pertinent info when it was needed.  Yay...not so much.  I'd get e-mails and phone calls asking me for certain info that I wouldn't have because the book was at the school.  So now I have the big book here at home, and a smaller book at school and any pertinent info they might need is now in their individual binders, whew!

Along with all that, I've been working on sewing costumes, helping the in-laws get settled in, and taking cake orders.

I'm a busy, busy girl!  Hopefully after this weekend things will settle down a bit.  I always said, oh I'll have the time to do this and that once Ivan starts school.  NOW...I say oh I'll have time to do this and that once Ivan goes to school for full days.  LOL...I have a feeling I'll come up with something else to say once he goes to school for full days too...What do you think?

Wind, Rain and Hail, Oh My!!

Imagine my surprise when the gentle pitter patter of the rain outside became a blustery wind mixed with dime sized pieces of hail.  Power loss ensued for about 10 minutes before turning back on, and ofcourse during the affair the incessant water leaking drip out of the vent located over the masterbed became a torrential downpour inside my house!

The question now, is the leak a roof problem or an A/C one???

But then again what does it really matter, seeing as how we are unable to have it fixed at the moment, lol!

Playing Catch-Up

Okay, so I'm reading a friend's facebook page and it reminds me that I started up this blog yet have not been on it in a very long time.

So --- Here is the gist of whats going on in Arizona.

Both the kids are in school - the little man started kindergarten this year, and the sweet pea is in 2nd grade.  They both made honor roll this quarter, and as their teachers put it, are a delight to have in their class. - ROCK ON!

Pete's parents FINALLY purchased a home out here and are even now as I type, driving out here with the horses and a u-haul to live permanently, yay!  We can't wait to have them settled in, the kids really miss them, and ofcouse Sierra is going bonkers for the horses to get here.  Plus lets face it and be honest, once the parents are here, can you say - babysitter - I might actually get to remember what a date night feels like.

Pete is working an in town position, a year long detail.  SO far he's not terribly impressed, I have a feeling this is going to be a long year for him!

I somehow got signed up to be the Art Masterpiece Program Chairman at the kids school - ahem, thanks a lot Crystalle! - A position that has been keeping me extremely busy, and more involved in the kids school than I ever thought I would be, lol.

The puppy "Mika", is 6 months old now, I try and take her to the dog park everyday, but the past couple of weeks we've had Zip and Abby too, so it's more like 2-3 times a week right now.  She is honestly the polar opposite of Hermes, and I have to admit, I love her to death, but the connection I had with Hermes just isn't there with Mika.  She's doing really well in the potty training area, she'll sit, shake, and lay down about 85% of the time, she's finally getting better at "come" but otherwise she's just a nut ball with way too much energy, who hasn't grown into her gangly legs, lol.

I'll hopefully write again soon, after all my birthday is coming up so I'll need to reflect on that in a bit, lol!


 

Our new GIRL

Sorry.. it's been quite sometime since I last posted.  I guess I just needed to have some time to absorb and move on from the loss of our two dogs.
I've missed quite a bit, I'll be posting pics from Easter and Sierra at gymnastics in the next couple days just to try and get a little caught up.

But for tonight, let me start off with the fact that it was a very nice quiet, relaxed day.  I woke up this morning, the morning of the day of Pete and my 10th anniversary with the Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter song "Un-Birthday" in my head, only the words were something to the tune of "Have a very merry 10th Anniversary to me, to me", it was a little annoying but I had to laugh at the sentiment I was apparently feeling for the day.
After I dropped Sierra at school, I spent the morning doing a little bit of retail therapy, always fun, but ofcourse I also saw more that I wanted to get, but am currently low on funds, so I have my list for after next paycheck purchases.
I came home and vegged out on the couch with Pete, (he was relaxing by playing some sort of war game on the x-box360 with his brother Dale, who was playing on-line with him), tried to take a small nap, but Ivan's love of MOM kept him constantly climbing on/bumping into or cuddling next to me.  I finally gave up and went to the bedroom where I promptly turned on the laptop and watched the latest episode of BONES.  At some point Pete came in and promptly fell asleep, poor guy worked all night, but made it to about 1:35ish before zonking. 
I then ran to get the kids and drop them at my friends house, afterwich I zoomed back to the house and woke Pete up at 3:30 so that we could get ready to go get our new family member. 

We got another blue Weimaraner, but this time it's a beautiful baby girl.  We got Hermes when he was 9 weeks, and our little girl is only 5 weeks, what a difference.  We tossed a few names around and the one we both agreed on was Mike.  All of the greek/olympian god names were a bit to long or just didn't fit.  So we started to think about German names since Weims are German.  Ofcourse Pete offered up the name Duchess, (The name of the dog, ARCHER's code name was based on).  I promptly laughed but nixed it because everytime I heard it, it reminded me of the Cat from Aristocats.  Then since we were talking about names from television, the movie Eurotrip came to mind, and we agreed on Mike - pronounced Mee-kah.
Here are the pics I took of her when we got back to the house, enjoy.

In Memoriam

Yesterday, Maeze our dog of about 12 yrs, passed on.  It was a said day for all of us especially Pete as he's had Maeze before we had ever even met.  She lived a long full life but at the end she was ready for all the pain to go away. I would put a picture of her up, but I don't have access to one on this computer.

As if that wasn't bad enough.  The puppy we adopted in October had to be put to sleep this afternoon.
11 days ago we noticed that his nose was swelling slightly, over the course of the next few days his nose swelled even more.  We finally got him an appointment at the vet for yesterday, they looked at him and said "Wow, we've never seen anything like that before."  They gave him a shot of steroids and a shot of antibiotics and took some blood to run labs to find out what was going on.  He ate some food that afternoon, and drank some water.  But then his health continued to worsen during the night.  He started coughing, and drooling excessively, as well as other equally worrisome symptoms.  We tried to administer the antibiotics that we had been instructed to give him, but his mouth was so swollen you couldn't shove anything down it, let alone a pill, and he had stopped eating/drinking, so we couldn't put it in there.  We waited until 11am, when we still hadn't heard from the vet about the lab results we called.  We were told that the lab results showed, he was anemic, and had a bone marrow deficiancy and that his kidneys were starting to shut down, on top of the infection that was raging through his body.  We took him back to the vet today around 11:30, where after consulting an internal medicine dr.  the vet told us the sad news.  Hermies had been born with bad kidneys, as he grew, they were shutting down.  It had only been a matter of time, we couldn't have known, and there was nothing we could have done if we had known.  He had literally started dying the day he'd been born.

The vet said that over time his kidneys had started failing little by little as Hermies grew, add to that his anemia and bone marrow deficiency.  Supposedly the kidney failure trigured a serious of events, that began with the bones in Hermes jaw basically being leeched of calcium making his jaws brittle.  His jaw had actually broken which had begun the swelling and then ultimately ended in infection.  Typically the cell counts in the marrow would have begun to fight the infection but because of his anemia and marrow deficiancy his body wasn't fighting at all.

It's been a hard two days, and I know that some people are coming to Sierra's birthday party on Saturday.  If you read this and are coming, I would appreciate it if Hermes was not mentioned as I'm not sure how I'll be feeling and would rather not chance crying at Sierra's birthday party.

Sierra and Ivan are dealing with the loss of both Maeze and Hermes better than I had thought they would, which is a relief.  Though they keep asking me when we'll get another dog.  All I can say to them is when the time is right.  Right now, I can barely make it 15 minutes without seeing something or thinking something that just seems to trigger the water works all over again.

I can say, that when I'm emotionally ready I would love to adopt another weimaraner.  When we are ready and can afford to adopt another weimaraner puppy, I'm hoping that it's another blue one, who has a lovers spirit.

Rain, Rain go away!!

Most people who know me, know how much I love the rain!  I love the smell, the sound, cloud cover, the way it seems to wash everything clean, the cool crispness in the air when there is a break in the rain.  I love it all, I'd have been a very good Seattle person!

However, when the rain comes and comes and comes, it is not a good thing cause the dear husband never got around to fixing the roof.  Now for the 2nd time, my bedroom wall paint is filling with large fist sized water bubbles.  So we get to go pop them to drain the water, and out ofcourse comes the milky mixture of rain water and plaster.  When it gets wet enough sometimes the paint just peels off like a bad wallpaper.  I'm SOOOoooo NOT happy.  Then ofcourse I slept with Sierra in her bed last night because, the vent above mine decided to have a quadruple leak.  Somehow, somewhere the water is getting inside the vent and draining down right on top of the middle and my side of the bed, leaving only Pete's side uncovered by towels and bowls.  And god love the man, but he wasn't going to be the gentleman and give up his space to sleep on the couch.

I'm venting of course, but it just ticks me off, because I've already scraped, spackled and re-painted the bedroom once, because Pete wasn't doing it, I got tired of looking at it after a few months.  Plus Pete bought everything he needed to fix the roof back in Aug/Sept and it's just been sitting in the shed ever since.  Just venting, venting, venting.  I know he's been busy and that friends/family were supposed to come help him do it, and that never happened.  It just sucks soo much.  I'm now glad I splurged and bought the bottle of wine to go with dinner tonight, because I've thrown that sucker in the freezer to get chilled and I'm popping it open early.

I'll get a nice glass, and start a new puzzle, I'm NOT going to think about the damage to my walls, roof, bedding, or the lack of sleeping in the comfort of my own bed.  The forcast says it'll be rainy all week long.  So bring on the wine, and I'll just breathe.

First Post of the New Year

I hope everyone's New Year celebration was fun!!  We enjoyed time spent down at my brothers house.  It was a nice night spent with family and friends.  Ofcourse I managed to fall asleep on the couch around 11 and woke up during the countdown, lol!

We're in the second day of BACK to SCHOOL for Sierra, and getting back into the grove of things, seems to me to get harder and harder to do with each passing year, (as though I've been doing it for more than 2yrs, right!)
I noticed during our 2-week winter break that no matter if I went to bed at midnight or at 9pm I still don't want to get up before 9am in the morning.  Setting the alarm for 7am at the latest to get Sierra to school by 8am, is quite the trial for me right now. 
In addition to working on correcting my sleep schedule, I also returned to the gym today (First time in 3-weeks).  Which is far better than the 2-month hiatus I took off in 2008.  Even with the shorter hiatus period I still end up feeling faint halfway through class, something that happened after my preious yrs break too!
In 2008 I was going to the gym 5 days a week, then I took a 2 month break over the holidays returning in January.  The first class back I have to leave halfway through and cool down in the locker-room otherwise I'd have passed out.  SO-problem assessed, fix - start eating breakfast in the mornings (something I never used to do unless it was the weekend).  SO knowing that I would go back to the gym this morning I ate a small breakfast, but apparently my iron was still too low, because I'm having the same problem even with eating something before hand now.  I guess I'll start trying to take iron supplements again.  Let's see if I can do it this time without gagging!
I'm not sure why, today of all days I decided to start spring cleaning.  The other day I looked at the bookcase and thought I should go through it and get rid of some of the books, I've no intention to read.  You'd think I'd say I should get rid of the books that I have read too!  But unfortunately I find I enjoy most of the books I read and then I think I need to keep them, so that I can read them again in the future.  Some of which I do read over again, and again.  However, Pete said that he was going to get me an e-book reader pretty soon.  I already have a lot (I mean A LOT) of e-books.  That I read off my laptop or his computer.  I know that probably about 75% of what is occupying my bookshelves, I also have in e-reader format.  So now the question is, do I sell the hardbacks that I've been collecting of my Fave authors and simply keep them on e-reader, or do I hold on to the tangible evidence of the written word? And allow them to continue to take up space on the bookshelves.  I've firmly decided in my mind to "lose" all the books including hardbacks of my UN-fave authors, and simply make sure I have the book in e-reader before letting them go.  But books to me are very important.  My brother calls me insane because my sister-n-law can loan me a 400+ page book on Saturday morning and I'll give it back to her on Sunday morning, completely read.  I feel that reading - no matter the author - is much like watching a movie play out inside my head.  I get so drawn into them sometimes (if its super good) that Pete will physically wrestle books out of my hand and hide them from me, so that I'll stop reading, and make dinner, lol!
So at any rate I'm spring cleaning and I made myself a list of 25 things to do today, before Pete gets home tomorrow.  Most of which involve cleaning of some kind.  I've only done 12 things on my list and this is the first time I've sat down today (5:30pm).  Between dropping Sierra off at school, the gym, paying bill (physically going to Kohl's), coming home to clean (which inevitably turns into organizing as well (can I never do things the simple way), picking Sierra up from school, coming home to clean some more, playing phone tag with family and friends and now finally sitting down to write this (which I started to write in my head while cleaning I might add), I can admit that I'm beat.  I've been wanting to sit down for I don't know how long, but I didn't, cause I had that feeling today that if I sat down, the rest of my list would be done for, cause it wouldn't be getting done.  I admit I was right, now that I've sat, I really don't think I'll be doing anything other than making dinner tonight.

AND OFCOURSE I just got a call from Pete, and guess what he's on his way home! Half of me says YEA! The other half says CRAP!  I've only gotten around half of the things done, that I wanted before he came home, since for some reason I rarely get the cleaning bug when he's home, I highly doubt much else will be getting done.  I know I'm not going to want to even move tomorrow after body works this morning.  OH WELL!  Light bulb moment - I have nothing defrosted for dinner, won't he be thrilled with Ramon soup. OMG!

Today, I believe, especially with the way I feel right now, would be a could time to share a quote I found today while going through my bookcase.

"We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existance, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.  If only we could slip over into that center!"
Thomas Kelly circa 1941