Stupid people everywhere

I'm still around.

The guy I fired the other day called my voice mail this morning and said he got his termination letter. He said he was going to mail in his I.D. badge and that he'd be expecting a check for the vacation he has coming. He sounded perfectly rational. Let's hope he stays that way!

In the meantime, I'm going to be disciplining three people tomorrow who thought it would be funny to pour rubbing alcohol on part of their workstation and light it on fire--twice.

I don't even know what to comment on that.

One last message

It's come to this. Greg and I are in our bedroom, it's almost 10 p.m., and he's on our bedroom computer looking at the internet while I'm on another computer blogging. We're not talking, we're not even looking at each other or saying spousely things like, "honey, look at this wild website."

We're clicking and mousing and almost completely ignoring each other. Such progress these modern times have brought.

And whose fault is it, you may say? Yup. I know.

On another note, I decided I'd better blog tonight because I wrote a termination letter today to a guy who's kind of unstable. He's going to get it tomorrow and since he lives in town, he might just decide to come down to the plant and kill that not-so-nice human resources lady who fired him.

I knew that I should make an effort to blog one last time, so see! I'm ignoring my husband for a good reason.

In all seriousness, I'm a little concerned about what this guy might do tomorrow and in the future. I told him flat out in the letter that if he shows up on our premises, we're calling the police.

I'm sincerely hoping that won't be necessary. And if I die (dramatic pause, with hand held to forehead in oh-so-classic overacting style), it was nice knowing you all!

Still alive

Well, my mom didn't call today to check on us, but we're all still alive.

Greg is coming home shortly. He may have to travel again at the end of this month, though, and that would suck.

Allie's still breaking out in near tears every now and then. The two of us were talking about this weekend, however, when her aunties and grandparents are coming to visit and I didn't realize it, but Julia was listening and storing things away.

She's woken up the past two mornings and her first words, after, "Morning, Mommy," have been, "Is Gamma here?" I keep telling her, soon, honey, soon!

Gotta take my vitamins

Yes, we're all still alive. It doesn't escape my notice that my mom always calls at least once per day when I'm home alone with the girls and Greg's traveling. It's always nice to talk to her, but I don't worry (and neither should she) anymore about me keeling over from a stroke or something and Allie and Julia having to survive on ketchup and mustard for three or four days.

There was a blurb in the newspaper not that long ago about a three-year-old with that exact situation. Her mom died of some kind of chronic condition and they found the little girl sitting by her mom's body. She was covered with ketchup and mustard, which was all she'd found to eat. They also found a wet washcloth, so she'd tried to wash her mom's face to wake her up.

She was only a little dehydrated, so she must have been able to reach the sink pretty well. See, this is why we have stepstools at every sink in our house! Someday, we'll put them away, and I'll still lean in from far away like they're still there because they've been in place for so long.

Nonetheless, Allie is almost 6 1/2 now. She knows perfectly well how to unlock the door and head to the neighbors if something's wrong. However, I can pretty much guarantee she'd leave the door wide open and the cat would get out. I guess I'd better stay healthy.

Random updates

Allie's last day of kindergarten is tomorrow. She hasn't cried yet at home, but I'm sure we're going to see tears tomorrow night. Fortunately, her kindergarten teacher lives less than a block from our daycare, where Allie will be spending the summer days, so she should see her at least occasionally.

I just re-read my post from last September 17, when she had just started school. If I knew how to add a link to it, I would.

Last year in August, I posted the story of Betsy and Chris, who lost their beautiful brick house in our local tornado. She didn't know it, but Betsy was about two weeks pregnant when the tornado came. To give the update on them, they had their third child and first boy on May 9, about two weeks after they moved into their rebuilt house.

I went for a short drive last night and passed by their house. They were outside, working on teaching Maddie, the oldest, how to ride her bike without training wheels. Betsy said they've gotten their pool filled and gotten the mechanicals to work, just in time for hot weather.

They're looking forward to doing something about landscaping soon, pretty much the last step in the rebuild, so they can be done with builder decisions and get back to the rest of their lives.

I understand it took very little time for them to move back in, since they only have new furniture and clothing. The ironic part is that ten minutes after I left them, the tornado sirens went off.

It was a tornado warning for a storm cell that was in the northern part of our county (we live in the far southeast corner of the county). A weak tornado touched down several times, tipped over some semis on the freeway, took a roof off one house, shredded some trees. There but for the grace of God . . .

The tornado last August went through one mile north of our house.

On another subject, I'm doing OK with my new job. I like what I do, but I'm still doing most of my old job because I haven't found the right person with the right mix of skills to take that stuff over. I'm not looking to directly replace myself, by the way. I want someone who's stronger in several areas than I was, but at this point, I'm going to settle for the kind-of-right person so I can get my life back.

We took our tan Mazda sedan in to a new mechanic yesterday--second time it's been in for an issue with engine hesitation that mechanics can't seem to find, let alone fix. Greg wants to get the car repaired so he can sell it and buy another one. He's not going to be able to sell it at this rate! Very frustrating.

I've written several times in the past about Julia's verbal skills. She's doing really well now. She named her first stuffed animal, her bear from Build-A-Bear Workshop, without calling it what it is (i.e. Dolly for a dolly, Kitty for a kitty). Julia's bear that Allie named Carol (that's a story in itself, ask my husband) is now named Jane.

Julia uses long phrases now and she's beginning to tell herself elaborate stories when she's bored, just like Allie has been doing for years. It can get a little loud in the car on long trips. Fortunately for my aching heart that isn't ready to have her be done being a little girl, she still says things like "no no" for window and "poo der" for computer.

Allie used to have a bunch of those, including "pas getti" for spaghetti. The only one I still hear her say regularly is "cah ler pitter" for caterpillar.

And now tomorrow she'll be done with kindergarten. I know that before long, she's going to be driving.

The horror, the horror!

Friday night, I was hungry for barbecue, so we headed out to the local franchise of Famous Dave's. We had a mixed results dinner, mixed because my food was really good and the girls were happy, but Greg had a sausage as part of his platter that was actually cold, not just not hot.

We never feel like just heading home to the suburbs after eating, so Greg suggested going to the Asian market down the street to pick up some more of a sauce that he likes. I thought it would be an interesting excursion--you always hear about the exotic (to American eyes) vegetables and fruits these markets carry, plus the interesting variety of canned goods, and I lead a very sheltered life, so I was happy to concur.

The market, which a sign said was affiliated with IGA, was bustling. We found a parking space and walked in. I have the normal expectations for a grocery store--clean, well-lighted, wide selection, good service, good prices. Well----

The store was well-lighted. It had a wide selection of interesting food items. There was good service (we initially had a problem finding the sauce Greg wanted and we were asked at least twice if we needed any help). The prices seemed in line.

It was not clean. Oh my god. Oh my god. The first thing we encountered was a god-awful smell of garbage from somewhere right by the entrance. Julia was walking and immediately said, "I smell something." Yup, we sure did.

Right inside the entrance were stacks and stacks of rice in 50 lb. bags, which Allie was curious about, since they don't have those at our local grocery. They appeared to be sitting right on the not-too-clean floor. Did I mention that there were bugs flying around us initially?

We proceeded to the sauce aisle. The whole store was very busy, so I picked up Julia to keep her out of people's way (and, I confess, so she wouldn't touch anything). Now I'm not one of those moms who carries sanitizing handi-wipes everywhere in case my kids get their hands dirty. After all, just three weeks ago, we spilled popcorn on the sidewalk and Julia got down there and ate some before we could stop her. But this was different.

Greg found his sauce and we explored a little bit. After all, as far as I was concerned, I wasn't ever coming back to the place. There were interesting fruits and vegetables, but then we hit the oh-my-god jackpot.

On the floor next to the fish counter (which had prominent but stained and tattered signs saying that only store personnel were allowed to put their hands into the seriously-needing-a-cleaning-or-maybe-they-should-just-throw-them-out-and-start-over fish case), was a cardboard box.

The box contained blue crab. Greg says they were alive, I don't know because I didn't want to look that closely I was busy holding my nose (not literally, but not because I didn't want to). Two people were using a pair of tongs to sort through them, and the smell was enormous.

I did notice that the box said it was leakproof, but someone's going to need to speak to the manufacturers about a warranty issue, because a stream of green god-knows-what liquid streamed across the aisle from the bottom of the box.

It smelled so bad. Greg (and unfortunately Allie) have very well developed senses of smell. I think Allie was literally holding her nose and Greg was retching in the frozen food aisle.

We quickly exited the premises with Greg's sauce and some glass noodles. Greg is going to have to find a new supplier for his sauce. This place needs to be burned down. You know, purifying flame?

I'll be at home 20 miles or so away, holding my nose.

Memorial Day weekend

I spent two and a half hours yesterday going through kids clothes and sorting out what we're going to keep, what we're going to give to St. Vinnie's, and what we're going to store, either until fall (if the girls still fit into them) or until Julia grows. She's such a little peanut; she still fits into some 18-month clothes (a little short on the legs but they still pretty much fit) even though she'll be 3 at the end of July.

Nothing like Allie, who wore her 0-3 month clothes for about 2 weeks before moving on to larger sizes. Nonetheless, I dug through the stored accumulation of Allie's old clothing and Julia now has a huge summer wardrobe and St. Vinnie's is getting five bags of baby clothes, blankets, and potty-training pants that we never used because once both of our children decided they were potty-training, they were trained.

I found out that we have an immense supply of old diapers, pull-ups and so on. Included in this is an entire unopened pack of size 4 diapers left over from almost 4 years ago that we never used for Allie. And Julia never got beyond a size 3 diaper before she decided she wasn't wearing diapers any more. I'm thinking we'll give them to the local food pantry, who like to have personal and baby items on hand as well as food.

I am so glad, in retrospect, that we had two girls. We went shopping earlier in the month for a complete new summer wardrobe for Allie since she's grown out of the stuff she wore last year. I can't imagine doing that for two kids if we'd had a boy. We don't have any friends who had their kids at the right time for us to get hand-me-downs.

Greg just came out of the shower and he's singing a song with the lyrics, "Oh, I'm so glad I'm me, don't you like what you see," as he wiggles his butt.

This is my life!

I'm stuffed, is it Thanksgiving?

We had a lovely, quiet, food-filled Mother's Day in the Lee household today. My husband made wonderful french toast, ham, and home fries for me this morning (on a tray in bed, thank you very much).

I was so full that I didn't even eat lunch.

Then for dinner tonight, Greg worked for several hours on a truly kick-ass french onion soup. I went to the grocery store with Allie this afternoon and bought a rather slender piece of guyere cheese from Switzerland for $7.53.

Wouldn't you think that Wisconsin, dairy capital of the U.S., would have a dairy making guyere somewhere? Well, if there is, our local grocery store doesn't carry it. I don't know, is there a guyere thing like there's a parmesiana reggiano thing? Limited dairies?

Regardless, we ate big bowls of soup topped with Italian bread and freshly shredded guyere and it was amazing. Dave, you have competition in the soup category! And Greg says he has a new favorite cheese.

Mmmmmm. Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

The green, green grass of home

Who invented lawns, I wonder. I mean, what's the point of having a lawn and having to mow it and mow it and mow it again. Every three days or so, realistically. That's a lot of work.

Just so you can have green stuff around your house during the summer. Hmm. That's assuming, of course, that you're willing to water it in August, when it would naturally go dormant if people didn't putz with it.

Greg cut our grass tonight (yes, I do it too) and because it's been raining a lot lately, the grass had actually already gone to seed.

It's like a lush, needy carpet. Anyone for ground cover and prairie grasses instead? I could go for burning it off once per year instead!

Zeeba neighba

My favorite comic strip of all time is probably Calvin and Hobbes, but the creator stopped drawing it a few years ago and it'll probably never be back.

When I was in high school and college, my favorite comic strip was Garfield. They're still drawing that, but it's just not that funny anymore. Or my taste has grown up, who knows.

My favorite current comic strip is Get Fuzzy. Next is probably Pearls Before Swine, but only when they do strips with these idiotic crocodiles that live next door to a main character, a zebra.

They're always plotting to eat the zebra, but they're really, really stupid. And funny. And they talk like the title above.

You can check it out by following the link off our main page for My Shameful Secret. Enjoy!

Awful children and Willy Wonka

One of those fix-your-family, super-nanny shows was recruiting families for future shows in our area this week. The newspaper reported on where they'd be available for interviews and said that part of the application process was to answer the question, "What's the worst thing your kids have done in the last week?"

Okay, I know I'm completely tempting fate here (and Greg would tell me frantically not to say it because he's pretty superstitious), but I can't think of anything that awful that my kids do. I know, give them time. They're only 6 and 2 3/4, so the major fights are obviously still in our future, but I've spent a little bit of time watching those shows and there are plenty of families with kids that age that are having a terrible time of it.

Kids who scream everything they say and kids who hit while obviously trying to hurt and kids who are god awful in public and kids that are so obviously out of control that you wonder what happened. Were the parents completely out to lunch the first few years or is there some weird kind of genetic mutation out there? You know, exactly the kind of families who got their comeuppance in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

The worst things my kids have done in the last week, let me see: Not sharing things (that's a biggie), pushing each other (but not pushing each other down or anything), hitting mommy (that earns a timeout but a 2-yr-old obviously doesn't do much physical damage), yelling at each other, complaining about being bored (that would be the 6-yr-old), chewing with their mouths open, wanting to wear pajamas all day, and not eating dinner.

The best things my kids have done in the last week: hugging each other, sharing sometimes, giggling together, not using bad words even though they hear Daddy say them, putting up with having their faces washed and sunscreen put on, being excited just for going outside, saying please, thank you, and excuse me, changing clothes without complaint, playing together nicely in the bathtub, helping each other, going to bed without complaint even though it's still light outside, sleeping peacefully through the night, being potty-trained, being nice to the cat, eating fruit instead of asking for candy all the time, doing well in school and at daycare, and sleeping on the weekend at least until 7 a.m.

I love my kids. No super nannies needed right now, thank you.

Peter Pan is sad!

I pulled out my work laptop tonight to review some work stuff and now I'm just blogging while sitting with my feet up in the living room. My husband would use this opportunity to proclaim the superiority of wireless networks . . .

"Forrest Gump" is on TBS and I'm half watching it. I don't know why, I've seen it a bunch of times, plus we own the movie and I could go downstairs and get the tape and I wouldn't have to put up with commercials.

Right now, Jenny is teaching Forrest how to dance.

I'm definitely not watching to the end. I always, always cry when Jenny dies, or at least I tear up.

I'm a sucker for sad moments in movies. The king of all examples of that, however, is from back when I was pregnant with Allie. Greg and I were in the living room and he was flipping through the channels. He decided to pause on a retelling of "Peter Pan."

We literally watched it for about a minute and a half, and they showed a montage of Peter coming to the window of Wendy's room to visit her over the years, each time with Peter the same and Wendy growing older.

And I started to cry. Greg looked over in astonishment at my brimming eyes and said, "What!?"

And all I could blubber back was, "Wendy got old!"

Hormones, I swear!

Car Counting

We visited the in-laws in Illinois this past weekend, for the first time in a disgustingly long while. It was a very nice visit, though too short. Greg and Dave opened the pool, and by the next time we visit, the girls will be able to go swimming.

It was a lot of work, and all I did was watch. When we left in the morning to visit Greg's Grandma Gertie, the cover was still on and it was covered with incredibly nasty green, slimy water. By midafternoon, the lovely blue water of the pool beneath was visible, with just an occasional dead baby mole or shrew or something floating here or there. And worms, lots of dead worms.

Really, it looked lovely! You just had to pretend not to see the floaters (or the stuff on the bottom) and think about how wonderful it will be to slip into it in another month or so. After it's dosed with lots and lots of chemicals. Nice, cleaning, purifying chemicals. I like chemicals. At least in this context, I do.

The girls had a wonderful time on the visit, except for the nine hours or so strapped in their carseats to get there and back. While we were driving back on Sunday afternoon, we played games that I played with my sisters on car rides as a kid. One involves everyone picking a color of car and then seeing who gets to 20 cars of that color first.

It was a lot easier 30 years ago on a two-lane highway. Allie liked it, but she had to rely on me and Greg to tell her what some of the car colors were across the interstate. Fortunately, central and north central Illinois is flatter than a pancake and boring as hell to drive, so I didn't endanger us all too much.

I'm glad we weren't playing "Punch Bug."

Castles and ships and trucks

It was warm today. Really warm. Sunny, breezy, and about 85 degrees at the end of the afternoon. Completely unseasonable for mid-April, but fun. Kind of like a visit from summer for the day--see you soon, ta tah.

We went out to eat dinner in a neighboring town and then to their enormous park and big playground for kids. You know the type--all wood chips and wooden walkways and ramps for kids in wheelchairs. There's the aforementioned castles, a ship, several trucks, a spaceship, a barn, loads of swings, a sandbox with a digger machine, rubber mat bridges to jump on, towers galore, a creaky wooden bridge, a bunch of slides, parallel bars and rings--you get the picture.

The girls had a glorious time. Greg stayed in the car (reading his favorite, an Onion newspaper) and I chased Julia hither and yon for almost an hour while Allie ran wild.

It's funny how different the girls are. It's not like I expected them to turn out the same person, but I think we're basically raising them the same and yet Julia is so different.

She's 33 months old and she's already just as brave, if not braver, than her 6 year old sister. Julia is not afraid of the dark and she will walk up a dark staircase and walk through our darkened bedroom looking for me in the master bathroom. Allie still has to turn on all the lights to get something from upstairs in the evening, if you can get her to go at all.

Julia never met a playground slide she wasn't willing to try immediately (sometimes at her peril). Tonight, she flew down one slide before I could get to the bottom to catch her and she fell off the end onto one leg and her butt, at least a 20 or so inch drop. I got there in time to help her brush off her muddy butt and check her leg, then she was off.

If Allie had taken the same fall even last year, there probably would have been tears and much subsequent fear on every other slide that it might happen again. On the other hand, Julia is at that terrified-of-bugs stage, and Allie thinks they're cool, as long as they're not actually on her.

I wonder if this all means that Julia will turn out to be some kind of sports fiend while Allie will get excellent grades and be part of the chess club. Isn't it wonderful to wonder?

Umm, still trying to think of something clever

The Lee family traveled this weekend to the frozen north. Not really, but we did see, pardon my french, a shitload of snow on the way.

I am not happy about seeing snow at this juncture of the year. There are crocuses blooming in our neighbor's yard and my tulips are about to send up buds, so snow is now supposed to be a thing of the past, except for maybe some very occasional flakes floating picturesquely and then immediately melting as they hit the ground.

At my parents' house (our destination), there was no snow, but the wind was biting cold and yet another reminder of why it's nice to live even a little south of them (where it's warmer!).

We had a lovely early Easter weekend, relaxing for all those involved, since one of my sisters had a recent health scare that turned out well this past Wednesday. We shared a stack of recent portraits of the girls, taken at a great place at the mall a little while back. New pictures all around!

And tomorrow it's back to the salt mines. Easter, however, is still on it's way (hippity, hoppity). There's a bunch of bunny poop in our yard, so the Easter Bunny should be able to find his way back. No more candy for the girls, however. Auntie Pam had her second annual, amazing, Easter egg hunt and they each have a pile of chocolate as big as they are.

We're taking donations now for future dental care.

Now I have to think of clever titles

We had a very quiet weekend. Very quiet, which means we stayed home for the entire time.

We had a better excuse than usual, too. Our usual excuse is that we're being lazy. Our excuse this weekend was that Allie has been sick. She's had a low-grade fever for four days now. Never higher than 101.

No real other symptoms--maybe a little stuffy nose, that's it. And this dang persistent fever.

She's been a good sport. She's eating normally and sleeping a little more than usual. Allie gave up afternoon naps last summer, but until today, she'd napped for at least an hour each of the last three days.

She hasn't complained too much about being bored, and Julia hasn't gotten it. I think, if Julia was going to, that she'd have it by now.

Do you think it's a spring fever?

Titles! I Have Titles!

My husband, Greg is the most wonderful man on the face of the planet. The fact that he is sexy, remarkably powerful (both physically and intellectually), talented and often well groomed should be enough to set him apart from most other men. But there's more. So much more that I swoon at the mere thought of the man.

I'm dizzy just writing about him.

I am truly a fortunate woman.

When I was in college, I wrote a paper for Ethics class on the ethical dilemma I faced in trying to decide whether to discard a plant I loved that had scales. I think that's what the disease is called--little brown hard half shell kind of things clinging to the leaves.

I wrote about how I'd had the plant for years and had tried to medicate the plant without success, and how the disease was getting worse. But I couldn't bear to throw the thing out and was it fair to keep a plant around, knowing it was going to die a horrible death by having these things suck out all of it's juices instead of just dying for lack of water or something if I threw it in a dumpster.

I think I got an A.

I'm always like that with plants. I torture my plants by not watering them for weeks, literally weeks. They do OK regardless, and when certain sentinel plants droop excessively, I water them all and they come back, repeatedly.

Most of my plants, if not all of them, need to be repotted. I've got golden pothos-philodendrem thingys with big stretches of vine that are dead and therefore should be cut out and restarted.

I need a live-in horticulturist. Madison is a pretty educated town--I bet I can find someone with a horticulture doctorate (is there such a thing?) who's driving a cab and looking for a second job, helping out horrible houseplant people. I'll sign right up.

I love James Bond movies. Even the bad ones. Even the ones with Roger Moore, which Greg can't bear to watch because he says Roger Moore doesn't act, he just smirks his way through films.

American Movie Classics has been running another of their periodic Bond series this weekend, so I've seen at least parts of about six or seven different Bond movies. They range from ones in which Bond still wore a hat everywhere to the awful one where Bond fights the voodoo-Tarot influenced African American bad guys in Louisiana.

That one made me cringe because it featured a caricature of a Southern sheriff who called everyone, "boy." Such a product of their times, these films were.

That chase scene through the long-changed downtown streets of Las Vegas in "Diamonds are Forever." The time when Bond "died" after being shot in a Murphy bed, only to be buried "at sea" in the harbor in 15 feet of water, so divers could pick him up and take him to a submarine for his next mission. And who could forget the car in "The Spy Who Loved Me" that turned into a submarine and then back into a car as it drove out of the ocean.

What's not to love in these movies?

And yes, I also worked for three hours on Saturday and got plenty of fresh air and playtime with my daughters and watched my husband spend hours on the computers. When is spring coming???

When we ride in the car, Allie is usually talking to herself, telling stories to entertain herself while Greg and I are talking about grown-up stuff. Julia is usually pretty quiet, unless we all decide to sing songs.

Then the girls take turns entertaining us, with Allie singing her ABCs or Mary Had a Little Lamb or We Are Santa's Elves (from her All School Sing in December, mustn't call it a Christmas Concert). Julia always, always, sings Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and only Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

The rotation takes place, Mommy or Daddy throwing in a song occasionally and everyone applauding between each number, with Julia always, always singing Twinkle Twinkle.

Until tonight, at home.

My parents are visiting and my mom was trying to get the girls to sing a song together. That never works. Julia hates it when Allie sings with her, so she'll stop singing immediately and yell at her, "No, I sing!" And Julia won't chime in on Allie's songs.

Somehow, Mom convinced Julia that singing together was an OK idea. The girls sang Twinkle Twinkle together and did a wonderful job. We all applauded and Mom asked what they wanted to sing next.

Allie spoke up and said ABCs, then started singing. And, lo and behold, Julia sang her ABCs along with Allie, not missing a letter. I've never heard her do that before. I didn't know she even knew the song.

It was cool. Ah, the power of grandparents.