Archive for July, 2007
I’m waving happily at you right now.
Published July 5, 2007 Homeschooling , Stuff I Think About When I Should Be Sleeping 7 CommentsThis has to be quick because we’ve got friends coming over to do some crafts this afternoon and I haven’t even made my bed yet, but I just wanted to tell everyone who reads my blog:
THANK YOU for every kind thing you’ve said about me. Either on your own blogs, or to me on the phone, or to your friends and family members who are wondering why you’re laughing so hard and spitting water all over the keyboard on those occasions when I post something funny.
I started this blog last winter, mostly to STAVE OFF THE DEPRESSION that comes when you suddenly find yourself living 2,000 miles away from home. And a couple of times, I’ve thought to myself that I should maybe just stop blogging because it can get a bit time consuming. And every time I’ve thought that, somehow I hear from one of you that you’d be sad if I stopped this thing.
So, I keep on keepin’ on.
But I did want to say THANKS. I mean, REALLY. You guys make me happy. I may not get a chance to comment on your stuff, or talk to you as much as I’d like to, but always know that I’m thinking about you and looking for that spare moment when I can catch up with you.
And pretty soon, I’m gonna figure out how to do the RSS feeds, the Technorati links, the email subscriptions, the book lists, and all that stuff that people have asked me to do.
I swear…just as soon as I figure out how to do all that stuff…I’m gonna do it. Well, gotta go. My 4-year-old has decided that it’s time to get undressed because we’ve got company coming.
Thanks again, everyone. 
Grandpa bought a boat this year.
I think he bought it because my nephew’s OTHER grandparents (you know…my brother-in-law’s mother-in-law) bought a boat and began taking my nephew out on it, so Grandpa simply HAD to get in on that. There was Just No Way Grandpa would be able to handle listening to how much fun my nephew was having on his OTHER grandparents’ boat.
Yep…one of those deals. You know what I’m talking about. The Grandparent-Boat-Wars. It’s not pretty, people.
So Grandpa bought a boat and we all went up there to the lake this weekend to take a ride in Grandpa’s boat. Which was fine. Except that my sister-in-law decided to take her mother’s boat out separately and MEET US on the lake, so that she wouldn’t have to spend as much time listening to Grandpa’s wife (our Step-Mother-In-Law…we call her Grandma-D) worry INCESSANTLY about whether or not she’d brought enough sandwiches. I’m serious. She spent every waking minute discussing the menu, from the minute we got to the house until we all collapsed from the exhaustion of listening to her, and then from the minute she awoke the next morning all the way up until we’d actually gotten onto the boat and then eaten….all she could talk about was the food. And then after we were done eating, she started in about how she was so glad she’d made enough because she was so concerned that we all had enough to eat and that there was still lots of fruit left over and on and on and ON!!!
And ya know, my sister-in-law can really bug the hell out of me, but I can’t really fault her for not wanting to listen to Grandma-D’s constant chatter about turkey and cheese and ham and swiss and mayo or mustard and there’s grapes and watermelon and she brought some juice boxes for the kids instead of soda because she knows I really don’t want them drinking soda all day and….
(whoa… flashback… sorry about that.)
So, we ended up tying the two boats together and subsequently spent about three hours lifting small children from one boat to the next. Because the boat that you’re NOT currently sitting on is clearly the better one. Besides…there might be a sandwich or two left over somewhere on Grandpa’s boat. Just ask Grandma-D. She’d be HAPPY TO CHECK ON THAT FOR YOU.
And I had a bit of a nicotine jones going on because Grandpa and my sister-in-law both still smoke and they kept lighting up and the smell of it was everywhere, and ya know…I coulda done without that. And I should mention that Grandma-D has to bring oxygen tanks with her wherever she goes now because her lungs are shot after 20-some years of working in a factory and being exposed to dangerous chemicals. So, she’s got her oxygen tanks going while Grandpa and my sister-in-law are smoking and we’re all lifting the small children over the sides of the boats so they can go back and forth.
We were just the PICTURE of nautical safety out there on the lake, let me tell you.
But in the end, no one got hurt, and the kids seemed to have fun. But I think I might wait quite a while before we go up there and do that again. For one thing, my back is killing me after all that lifting. But that’s not the worst part.
You want to know what the worst part was?
The worst part was that after listening to Grandma-D worry about the food for about 16 hours straight, in the end, she didn’t put mayo on any of the sandwiches. We’d told her that our girls don’t like mayo and to just make their sandwiches plain. And I think she panicked a bit because she wasn’t sure Which Sandwich The Girls Would Pick. So she just left the mayo and mustard off of all of them.
It was the dryest roast-beef sandwich I’ve ever eaten.
