Putting a Hole In Your Tongue. WHY?

I was standing in line at Wal-Mart when I over heard two high school age girls talking. The one was excited because her parents were going to pay for her to get her tongue pierced as a graduation present. Of all the things someone could give as a graduation gift a hole in some one's tongue would have never crossed my mind. Let me just say, I don't get it. My entire life I have always tried to avoid doing anything that might make me accidentally put a hole in my tongue or any other part of my body. SO why would anyone pay someone to put a hole in their tongue? I have talked to many people with a hole in their tongue to try to get some insight to this trend, but I have yet to get an answer that makes any sense.
CW, many of her family members and most of her friends has a hole in their tongue, and they love taking pictures together with their tongues stuck out. I think it makes most of them talk funny and they look stupid with their tongue hanging out in pictures. CW finally decided to remove the tongue barbell thingy. She also removed the ring through her lower lip a long time ago. I guess every one has to grow up sometime. I think these people with piercings enjoy pain and if that is the case I would be happy to put some holes in them for free. I keep offering,free holes to CW, but she always turns me down.

Smelly Cars

For reasons I don't have time to explain I had to switch vehicles with C.W. for a few days. Her idea not mine. C.W. doesn't like cleaning her van any more than she likes cleaning anything else so just let me say I was grateful that my trip to work is short. Driving her fairly new van that was full of junk and garbage made me think about all the people I have known and loved in my life time that drive vehicles that are like rolling garbage cans or storage containers full of junk. I also thought about the fact that car manufactures should specially design a vehicle for people that have to haul small kids around. This vehicle should be designed so you can just hose it out weekly. Everything in it should be plastic coated and stuck on with the strongest adhesive possible. And for the sake of the driver it should include one of those windows behind the driver like a limo has so the grown ups in the front seat don't have to hear what is going on behind them.
I am actually used to riding in vehicles that are smelly, sticky and full of junk since at least two of my four sisters seem to have an unspoken competition to see which one can allow their kids to mess up the interior of their cars the worst. A third sister has a neat new car these days, but when she was younger she had the scariest car of all and she didn't even have kids to help her mess it up. As a matter of fact, once when she was stopped for a routine speeding ticket (yes, I do mean a routine speeding ticket, she has gotten about 30 of them in her life time and it is quite routine for her to get them), the police officer decided to bring out a drug sniffing dog to sniff around her car. Now my sister will drive fast, but she doesn't use drugs. Well, the police dog got excited and barked at her backseat floor board area then ate something he found. The cop went nuts on my sister saying she better tell him what his dog had found and eaten. My sister said well shine the flashlight down their and let me see what he might have gotten. Then she started to laugh because the dog had eaten the rest of a Big Mack she had thrown on the floor two days earlier.
I have noticed that sometimes even people with neat clean houses will have nasty vehicles, and sometimes people with spotless shinny vehicles will have dirty houses. My car is like me. It looks old on the outside, but it runs strong and is in pretty good shape on the inside. Well I guess I need to crawl around C.W.'s van and figure out were that bad smell is coming from It shouldn't be anything too horrific since both the kids and cats are all accounted for.

There Will Be Blood!

CW is a work in progress. She has conceded that she has issues and is getting help. AND for three weeks of the month, her and I get along relatively well. I sometimes now even think of the letters CW as standing for something a bit more pleasant than crazy witch. Such as, say, creative woman,Christian warrior, or even cleaning worker (well maybe not that one) but you get the idea. BUT for that fourth week of the month, the days we have come to call the preblood dark days, the crazy witch within her will rear it's ugly head. She is snappy and mean, tired and cranky AND down right unpleasant to be around. Everything my son and I say makes her mad. YOU CAN NOT JOKE WITH OR TEASE HER!!!! We do try not to aggravate her when we know she has PMS, but everything about us aggravates her so we usually just abandon our efforts to be nice and then decide to go out of our way to piss her off. Now I know this sounds wrong and maybe even a little evil of us, but we never claimed to be perfect. AND even though the Hub doesn't technically get PMS he does seem to get in PMS like moods so we do the same thing to him. The Hub and CW have a lot in common! So one day if we wake up with a knife in our backs we will have to admit that we had it coming, but it was totally worth it!

The Super Powers of Toddlers

All toddlers have at least one super power. It is usually the POWER OF CUTE, that gets most of them, what they want, but my grandchildren have a few extra SUPER POWERS besides the POWER OF CUTE. The Princess for example, has the POWER OF SONIC SCREAM! This is a scream so loud, long and ear piercing that no ordinary human can with stand it. She also has been recently developing the POWER OF THE EXTENDED POUT! She hasn't been to pleased with the results from the extended pout, but she seems determined to work at this power until it is perfected.
The Prince on the other hand is just starting to work on his super powers. He seems to prefer the POWER OF PROLONGED NOISE! He will bang something or pound on something until the ordinary human has lost their minds. AND he is also developing the POWER OF PITIFUL FACE CRYING!
Screaming, crying, banging and lots of noise in general maybe one of the reasons why living in an extended family may not be for a lot of older folk. I know I used to love the peace and quiet of my clean empty house. I can't remember what those two things (peace and quit) were exactly, but I know I used to really enjoy it.
Our 1 year old Prince and two year old Princess are extremely noisy toddlers. Honestly, it doesn't bother me that much, but it drives the Hub crazy.The princess also has a knack for finding something to use her SONIC SCREAM about right when the Hub starts to speak. Then the Prince decides if it's time to make noise he will join in by banging stuff on the table and yelling using his POWER OF PROLONGED NOISE. Finally, when the stuff the Prince is banging is taken away from him he starts to cry the PITIFUL FACE CRY. At that point dear old Pop can't even remember what he was trying to say in the first place and thus finds yet another reason to go to WAL-MART, which he does at least once a day like clock work.

Happy Anniversary Hub

Today is a special day for me and the Hub. It is our 31st wedding anniversary. People often ask how long I have been married and then say wow, what's your secret? So I'm going to share our secret with you.
Don't get married unless you are completely no-doubts-about-it in love with the person and you are positive that they feel the same way, because true love is the only reason to get married and to stay married. Marriage is hard, and it is supposed to be a life-time commitment. And if you are contemplating marriage you need to ask yourself some what if questions.
What if this person looses their job and I have to support them? What if we have financial troubles? What if this person becomes ill or is in an accident and I have to take care of them? What if one day they are fat, wrinkled and gray or (gasp)bald headed? What if they loose their teeth, their hearing, or their eye sight?
If you stay married long enough, eventually most of these what ifs will happen. That is what happens in this funny thing called life. When things are hard, you will ask yourselves do we still love each other and can we get through this? AND if you have a true love you will say of course we still love each other and we can get through this together. AND you will!
To my Hub, I was a young and silly 18 year old girl when you married me. Thank God you were 10 years older than I was and knew a lot about life. You have always taken good care of me and I have never doubted our love. As we get old together I will no doubt have to take good care of you, and I will. BECAUSE we have always had a TRUE LOVE!

Is the Prince lame?

When I was a child I read a story called The Little Lame Prince. It was one of my favorites, but I did feel bad for the Prince in the story. Luckily, for us our little Prince was a much happier and easier baby to take care of than his sister had been. The Hub, also known as Pop, was able to take care of him when CW worked. We didn't want to put the Prince in daycare until he could walk. So we waited for him to walk. He turned one year old and didn't walk. He did crawl, but wouldn't even try to walk. He turned 14 months and still wasn't walking, his doctor was a little concerned. He turned 16 months and still wasn't walking. His doctor recommended we have him evaluated because he seemed developmentally delayed. He also wasn't trying to talk. We were told that if he didn't walk by 18 months then we should be really concerned. WE WERE ALREADY REALLY CONCERNED!
Then a few days before he turned 18 months. He stood up and walked across the living room just like he had been doing it for months. Now I have a theory about why the Prince didn't walk for so long. First you would have to know his sister the Princess(AKA the drama queen). She jumps, dances and bounces around the house like a jet powered Barbie doll. Little brother was probably smart enough to figure out that not standing on two feet until he was taller and fairly steady was his best chance of surviving. The Prince has started trying to talk recently also, mostly so he can yell at his sister.
Siblings,you can't live with them and God gets really mad if you kill them, so what's a kid to do?

Gardening with Grandma

Its good to be a live-in grandparent. Today I planted a garden with my two year old granddaughter. She loved digging in the dirt. The Hub picked up one of those $40 flower bed kits from Home Depot and some dirt from Wal-Mart. It didn't take long for the Hub to assemble the kit. It is made from a fairly heavy duty plastic so it should last a few years. The Princess and I planted Marigolds, Impatience, Sunflowers, Zinnias and 2 tomatoes plants. She then was given a small watering can and shown how to water the plants. She ran back and forth from the tub of water to the garden like she was putting out a fire. Her urgency showed just how important she knew her job was. Her little brother was actually splashing around in the tub of water his sister was filling her watering can from. He didn't seem interested in gardening today. Maybe later.

Take thee to the Garage!

Up to this point the Hub and I paid most of the bills and still did most of the house work and yard work. Then the Hub got sick and had to retire early from his job. We could no longer afford to keep the house or pay all the bills related to running a large house hold. Luckily, our son's career was going well so they decided to buy our house from us. They had been in our converted two car garage for about three years, now the Hub and I would be living in the garage.
I was very depressed about this at first, but I was amazed how much space a two car garage actually had and with some careful planning and organizing we fit the important stuff into our living space. So now the Hub and I live in the garage and I don't clean their house or do dishes or anything else I don't want to do because (insert whatever reason CW had for not doing anything for more than 2 years). I do feel a little guilty about it at times, but then I am sure CW felt very little guilt for not doing anything so I ignore that guilty feeling and slip into my nice quite garage. I am beginning to enjoy the view from the garage.

And Baby Again Makes 6

CW liked school and was doing well. The first few months flew by. Then CW decided her birth control pills were making her sick so she stopped taking them and surprise, surprise, she got pregnant again. The Hub was less angry this time than I was. I was extremely, upset over this development. She did however finish her program and graduated before baby number 2 came along. She even managed to get her drivers license. They looked at houses. They couldn't find any they really liked. CW developed diabetes, and complications with her pregnancy. SO we decide to live together a while longer. Many more people now thought we were nuts!
This time, CW did not eat everything in sight with baby two. She took better care of herself and delivered by c-section, the 2nd love of my life, a nearly 9 pound boy. After CW recovered from the c-section we discussed the possibility of them moving out of our house. Our son decided he needed to take some classes to improve his job skills so he could make more money and they asked us to help them with the babies so CW could start working. By this time, the Hub and I were so in love with the 2 grand babies that we couldn't say no, so we didn't.

And baby makes 5

Lots of people thought we were crazy to let them stay in our house. Of course, we didn't care what they thought. The best advise I got was, keep your mouth shut because when that baby gets here you won't care about anything else. And I knew that was probably true.
SO, on a sunny day in June the newest love in my life was born and because I was a teacher I had the whole summer to bond with her. She was a big baby, she weighed over 10 pounds and was delivered by c-section. CW came home jumped on the bathroom scale and screamed. She had only lost 20 of the 65 pounds she had put on. She said, "I thought you would drop at least 50 pounds delivering a baby." She looked sad, took a pain pill and shuffled off to bed.
I wish I could tell you that it was a wonderful summer, but it wasn't exactly. That little baby girl cried all the time. Well, actually screamed. And the more I tried to step back and let her parents learn to deal with her the more she screamed and the more CW cried and my son pleaded with me to do something. Finally, after dealing with several feeding issues, including CW's frustrated unsuccessful attempts at breast feeding. We resorted to a special baby formula that was 25 dollars a can. It must have had been mixed with gold spoons or something. Finally, by the end of the summer baby girl was starting to cry less and sleep more. We convinced CW to get on meds for postpartum depression, and she decided to attend school to be a cosmetologist in the fall. And we made a commitment to live together for another year while CW attended school so we could help with the baby and provide transportation.

The Growing Year!

The Hub and I were mad at first when we found out we were going to be grandparents, not that we didn't see it coming. Our son asked if they could stay with us for a while so that CW could get a full time job and they could save up some money. We offered them the garage which had been converted into a large room with it's own bathroom. Our son thought CW would work the whole time she was pregnant, squat down in a field have the baby, fling it up on her back and get right back to work. I tried to explain to him that there were frequently issues that came up with pregnant women and that he had now drawn a wild card in the game of life. He thought I was nuts. CW did try to work at least part time, but due to health issues it just didn't work out. Unfortunately, for my son it also turned out that CW was allergic to house work. Cleaning fluids gave her a headache, pushing the vacuum cleaner hurt her arm and loading the dish washer hurt her back. So she never did any of those things. I did however insist that she learn how to do laundry and she would on occasion make a small dent in the mountain of stinky clothes the accumulated in their bathroom.
CW was a 20 year old high school graduate with no life skills or job skills (unless you call flipping burgers a job skill). She didn't even have a drivers license. So I taught her how to drive in my car and helped her get her restricted license. Meanwhile, the Hub and I hauled her to doctor appointments and everywhere else she needed to go for the next 15 months.
CW did have one thing she did well and greatly enjoyed besides vegging on TV, she liked to eat. She gained about 65 pounds by the time the baby was born. She ate the wings off a whole chicken coop full of chickens and single handedly kept McDonald's from feeling the recession until well after everyone else had. She ate so much cookie and cream ice cream that the Keebler elves threatened a strike. Her doctors told her to stop eating so much, she didn't. She got gestational diabetes and was put on a special diet, she didn't follow it. They told her the baby was getting too big, and she would need a c-section. She thought a big baby would be easier to take care of. People would ask her if she was having triplets when she went out in public and it made her mad. AND still she ate! I actually had never seen a pregnant woman get stretch marks on their knee caps before, but she did. You almost wanted to feel sorry for her. ALMOST!

How I met CW

My mother use to say the best laid plans of mice and men. And I would say, WHAT? And now I know. This blog is about how you can make all the plans you want, but there will always be unforeseeable events that will slightly or even totally change the direction of your life. And before we go any further, no I don't have any terrible diseases, and no I haven't been in an accident that has kept me from being an Olympic gold medal winner. As if! No, but what has happened to me can't ever be completely changed. Though, Zoloft does makes it bearable most days if we both remember to take it. What happened is that my one and only child married a "crazy witch" hence forth CW.
Here is how I found out about CW. Four years ago I came home from a three week trip, I tip-toed into my son's room to give him a hug and there in the bed with him was a girl. I quietly left the room and asked my husband who in the hell was in the bed with our son and why was she in the bed with our son in our house. AND that was the first time I ever laid eyes on CW. The next morning I was introduced to her at breakfast and my son told me they were in love. She had about 8 earrings in each ear, a tongue ball thingy, a nose ring and something stuck through the skin under her lower lip. Thank the lord she had no tattoos. BUT she was dressed like I believe the term is a "hoochey mama".
Now let me add here that my son is a very nice young man and had just graduated from college. He had never brought a girl home and slept with her in our house to my knowledge, so all I could think was, "you have lost your damn mind and after you take that girl home I am going to hurt you!" I chatted with the girl a bit and quickly realized that she was looking for a "baby daddy" and that she was a bit of a fruit cake. My son took her home and then asked me what I thought of his girlfriend. I told him NOT to get her pregnant, things were moving too fast. NEEDLESS TO SAY HE DIDN'T LISTEN AND CW WAS PREGNANT WITH IN 6 WEEKS.