BEAGLE IS A MOM

No-Not cosmo...the REAL BEAGLE. She and hubby welcomed a son to their family. My heart is absolutely jumping with joy for them. When I first started blogging and hopped around many many blogs of couples with heartbreaking IF problems, TWW's, matches that fell through etc, .....through all of those blogs, Beagle became the one that my heart kept going back to. I felt a particular bond with her and through all the others successes through adoption or birth, her wait was the one that weighed on me the most. So..join me in sending up a yippee for beagle and her new pup. It is her time :)

tidbits of nothing

I really don't have one specific thing to post today. The glory of having ADD is that I am able to stress/think about numerous things at one time. Yay for me.

I have a few questions that I wish I could have answers to....most of them at some point, boil down to money or lack of it.

The price of gas. The cost of college tuition. The heating bills from last winter that I just paid off with our tax refund. (Still waiting for the stimulus check...gosh golly gee, that one is going toward paying off the dentist-so much for stimulating MY economy).

You know when you make a life plan and it doesn't really turn out? I am sure everyone can relate to that on some level. 17 years ago when my mom died she was in the middle of selling her share of a family business. The deal finalized 3 days before she died...while she was in the ICU. My brother and I inherited her profit and it was a pretty damn nice profit. Shocked, sad and overwhelmed at the time (I had S1 who was 17 months old and S2 was 6 weeks old--yeah, I know the old cliche of "adopt and you will get pregnant"--still makes me cringe when people say it). Anyway (see the ADD kicking in here...not even one direct continuous coherent thought;) Big D and I were faced with what to do with the inheritance. Neither one of us are big gamblers so the thought of investing in stocks didn't appeal to us (thankfully because the market has tanked a few times since then) so we decided to invest in real estate. This was the best decision we ever made except our 'life plan' hasn't really worked.

We had planned on building and living in our dream home (which we did and do) and then when the two boys (we had no idea there would be an S3 at that point) were in high school, we would sell the house, downsize and use the money for their college. Sounds like a good plan, WAS a good plan but ---- nobody is buying these big houses now. So, here we sit looking at student loans, weighing good and bad and feeling ridiculous. I would bet almost anything that NONE of our neighbors are even wincing at the thought of tuition, hell they are probably even smiling when writing the checks. Me, well I feel like a heel. I know it is not my legal responsibility to give my kids an education past the age of 18 but I feel like a schmuck. It is almost comical to look around and see all the "things" we have yet our kids are looking at loans. I am not looking for sympathy or handouts I just don't want to feel like I do. The boys know that we are stuck in this situation till the economy changes and we can sell but I guarantee you, nobody on the outside would ever imagine that I am struggling like this. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate everything we have and still believe we made the best choice at the time to build the house rather than any other investment options (It has increased in market value almost double) but it really doesn't do us much good if we can't cash in on our investment.

I think I have mentioned before that I want to someday start an "average kid" scholarship. None of mine are athletes, only one is a genius (he made the Deans list-but again, no scholarship for that) and I think there needs to be a fund out there that regular kids that are smart but not brilliant, studious but like to have fun, and kids that will really make the world a better place...they need to get a little appreciation. I would love to know that I was helping some regular kid pay for his books or ease his stress over one semester of room and board etc. It would feel great to do that....maybe someday. If only I could win that lottery.

In other news the notorious uncle rob will be coming for a visit soon. Dear god, that reminds me I need to refill my x*anax. I wish I could put into words what his impending visits do to my family. When he first announces the dates of his visit (he never asks if it is ok, he just tells us when he will be here) there is a lot of joking and laughing about him but as the date draws closer the doom cloud starts to move in. S1 is headed off for a week at a friends, S2 is lining up as many odd jobs as he can and S3 is giddy with excitement (he hasn't quite caught on that uncle rob is a cranky old leach). As for BigD he will spend an extraordinary amount of time at work and upstairs "working" in his office. ("working" is a euphemism we use for playing online scrabble). I explained to uncle rob that now that I am working 2 jobs I won't be able to hang out much and that he will love our pups as they can sit with him while he flips through 120 channels over and over and over again, complaining about all the food I serve, questioning my parenting, telling all of us what is wrong with us as a family, (remember this man has been divorced twice and one of his own kids can't stand being around him), he reprimands my children, yells at my dogs, tells me I have no idea how to "train" a dog since he has had 2 in his lifetime-he is an expert. Basically he is an expert on just about everything yet he doesn't have a pot to pee in. (remember he and I inherited the exact same amount from our mom when she died....he blew it all in 2 years and now rents a little studio apartment and can't even qualify for a car loan-he makes his kid lease it for him. It is so pathetic and sad and yet he is so freaking obnoxious it is hard to work up any sympathy. OHHH and he thinks he is a stud. He will hang out in bars trying to pick up 30 year old's (he is 64---HUGE age gap between us thanks to my own moms IF problems) and wonders why he isn't "scoring". GAG.

I think I am done whining now. It always makes me feel better to get things out there...it helps the nagging thoughts quiet down.

I also want to show you what two months of a little rain and some sun can do with a before photo from April and a now photo from June: I did absolutely NOTHING except pull a few weeds. Gotta love mother nature :)

grkgrkgrk

My husband is a *Cynopterus Brachyotis. Yes, he is. We all know that they have amazing hearing and at 2 am he proved my point. We were blissfully sleeping with the cool air blowing in on us, dreaming of nothing but sleep and I hear “OH GOD”. This kind of middle of the night statement is usually reserved for when a loved one is, say.... in mid heart attack. I jolted awake asked what was wrong and in my mind I am quickly thinking..”where in the hell are my jeans and what shirt can I wear while I take my loving husband to the EMERGENCY ROOM”? He calmly states…Cosmo puked…ON the bed. (husband was sleeping but woke up to the sound of the grkgrkgrk that precipitates the actual vomiting…a sound I have learned to ignore.) My immediate thought was –will it touch me while I am sleeping? Cause, if not, I will take care of it in the morning. He went on to say it is on the COMFORTER. Again I thought if it won’t touch me I will take care if it WHEN I GET UP. Amazingly he went to the bathroom to get what I thought would be a bath towel and he comes back to the bedroom with 1 damp paper towel. (Mind you this is a man that would disappear at the mere thought of going near any one of our three kids when they even mentioned the word nausea, much less vomit). When he was walking back to the bed Cosmo made just two more little grkgrk sounds, so quiet that I didn’t even register that I should react and then he puked the rest of what was undigested from his bedtime snack. After quickly assessing the situation, and realizing that, nope, it wouldn’t touch me, I was ready to give it a quick wipe with a towel and roll back over and finish my sleep. Not so with Mr. Fruit bat. He ripped the quilt off with such gusto that I was worried that the half dollar sized vomit would fling off the quilt on onto the TV across the room. Yes, it was about the size of a 50 cent piece. We are talking about a dog that maxes out at about 20 lbs and whose stomach is roughly the size of a large walnut. How much could he actually puke?? So from 2 am **till the CAT turned on the radio at 6 (I live in a freakin zoo) I shivered. Under a quilt, my boxers and t-shirt are great,,,,not so much with a light blanket and all the windows open when it is 40° outside. Needless to say I am cranky this morning. But on the upside my beloved fruit bat is leaving later today and won’t be back till Tuesday so I can let cosmo sleep on Mr. Fruit bats pillow while he is away. Sweet revenge. *Common Name : Lesser Short-nosed Fruit Bat, They reach maturity at 6 months of age. They have been described as voracious feeders, eating more than their body weight in food in one sitting. **People think cats are stupid. They are not. Ours has learned how to press the on button of the radio to wake me up so he can be fed. Sometimes I wonder who is in charge around here. Oh...and I apologize to all the students that are actually trying to goog*le fruit bats and were directed here. Get back to your project and quit goofing off reading blogs.

rekindling feelings

Last night BigD and I went to see J*ames T*aylor in concert. 29 years ago we saw him on our first date and we have seen him every time he has come to Blosso*m Music Center since. It is a once a year treat that we always make sure is on our schedule and that one night seems to bring a bit of the magic back to our life. It brings memories of all the things that have passed in those years and amazes me at how fast it has gone. The show was wonderful as always but we were talking on the way home that JT seemed to have aged a little…then we both busted out laughing realizing that WE have aged too. Sometimes it is easy to forget that! The only reason that we saw him that first time all those years ago is because BigD had a date that pissed him off the night before so he decided not to take her. We had met a few weeks earlier and had chatted a bit but I thought his friend that was with him was really hot, so I was nice to BigD, but interested in the friend. When BigD called at 4pm asking if I wanted to go to the concert that night, some bizarre person overtook my body and mouth and said yes. I had never ever gone out with anyone 3 hours after they had called, cause we all know that is a sign of a desperate woman and I was not about to appear desperate. Besides I thought if BigD thought I was a good match for his friend he might set us up:) That night we had a blast and ended up back at my apartment talking all night. I thought he was sweet and could tell he had confidence but not arrogance and at some point during that night, I completely forgot about his hot friend and decided that if BigD wanted to go out again, I would surely go. Eleven months later we were engaged and another eleven months after that, we were married. We have had many ups and many downs over the years but our yearly date to the concert has been an unwritten ‘must do’ and for that one night, I can look at him and remember why I married him in the first place. (As for the hot friend…..he and BigD are still friends, he is not at all the kind of guy I should or would have married but we are good friends with he and his wife and his wife actually was the social worker that was directly involved with S1’s birth mother and is the woman that lovingly handed my son to me 19 years ago…it is funny how life works.)