Are you in the mood for a heart-warming story? Then hear the lovely story of our Monday…
I dropped the kids off at school and swung by the store on the way home. When I came out of the grocery store I turned on the truck, it vrooooomed at me like a race car and complained the rest of the way home. Whiny car. Muffler problem. We stuffed the little girls in the van and Hubby hopped in the truck so we could go take it to the shop. He backed the truck out…. and the van wouldn’t start. The van has a light switch by the sliding door and apparently one of the kids had turned it on and left it on from the night before.
So Hubby pulled back into the driveway, jumped the van, and off we went. We dropped off the truck, Hubby hopped into the van, and we headed home. And then the van started slipping out of gear…. and barely made it up the hill….. And it has been lazily sunbathing in the driveway ever since. Must be rough! It better be enjoying it’s little escape though because it’s getting repaired on Saturday and after that it’s back to work, work, work!
Well, after that Hubby was in a somewhat unpleasant mood so he went upstairs to go console himself by glaring at his computer screen (and who doesn’t feel better after that??). After about half an hour I hear a big crash followed by further frustrated sounding noises. Then his computer chair had a one way ticket down the stairs. In two pieces. Somehow the back had broken off. Overall, it was not the most cheery day. On the plus side, Monday was card night so my buddies came over and we played cards for a couple hours.
Here endeth the tale. You weren’t really expecting heart-warming, were you? At least it ends well. Our super-car-guy-buddy-turned-mechanic-who-makes-house-calls came over to take a look at it tonight and he said that it’s not the transmission like we originally thought; it’s just a U joint, which is much easier and cheaper to fix. Phew! We’re pretty delighted about that. Guess we’ll see if that’s really how it goes…
Rachel
Written by Rachel Shubin ~ Fiendish friend for effusive fun!
Well, my #2 daughter turned five on Friday. Yikes! I can’t believe she’s so big already. She spent Friday night at Hubby’s parents house and then Sunday night at her Aunt and Uncle’s house and then is having a party on Saturday (combined party for Faith’s first birthday, which is February 1st), so she’s all celebrated out. Oddly she doesn’t seem too upset by this….
Not much else going on around here. My six year old is suddenly looking very tall and my eight year old told me the other day that his pants were too tight. Overall, very disturbing. Parenting drives me crazy. I spend half the time wondering when the heck all these little uncivilized maniacs will grow something resembling brains and the other half of the time wondering how all my little tiny, cuddly babies suddenly sprouted into these tall, smart children.
These feelings (plus half a dozen others ranging from “now I’m going to pitch this child out the window” to “I want hug this child for the next 4.8 years straight” with many stops in between) bounce back and forth at lightning speed numerous times every day. Makes me feel moderately schizophrenic. Very odd. Plus with so many kids, just as one or two kids is growing out of the driving me nuts phase (or are temporarily behaving for the week), one or two or four others are jumping right into the make Mommy crazy sphere. This may have something to do with why I feel like a crazoid….
Rachel
Written by Rachel Shubin ~ Fiendish friend for effusive fun!
Well, since we had four inches of snow yesterday and haven’t left the house since, I now have to recant my entire last week’s entry. Nice to have a bit of snow though. The kids are naturally delighted. Sounds like at the lower elevations the snow is a bit more sticky, but up here where we live it’s pretty dry and not terribly good snowman snow. Seems to work fine for tossing at each other though.
So did you guys all watch the premier of 24 this week? I mean really, aren’t at least 75% of the country Jack Bauer fans? Also, very nice to see Dr. Julian Bashir from Star Trek DS9 back in action again on 24 (yes, me nerd, I know…). Don’t know where he’s been hiding himself lately.
After Sunday’s ep., I’ve decided that old Jacky boy needs a new nickname. From now on, I’m just going to be referring to him as Jackula. In case you missed it, Jack kills his evil captor guard (there are always lots of those in this show) by biting his neck, presumably snacking on Le Jugular, and then spitting out the big bitten-off chunk onto the floor.
Sorry, but neck gnawing? Really?? Fine, cool if you’re say, the un-dead (I think that vampires should be called post-dead really because aren’t all of us people sashaying through life technically un-dead too? I mean, I don’t feel dead at least 83.267 percent of the time); but noshing on neck when you’re pre-dead? Ewwwwww! Especially without some French bread and a side of pickles. Blech!
Yeah, yeah, I know he wasn’t actually espousing the nutritional value of such a diet but more attempting to avoid that cheery little event we like to call “certain doom.” Maybe he should get some sort of administrative variance for being firmly in the soon-to-be-dead category. And since he just got sprung from a Chinese prison (where they apparently weren’t very hospitable) to come back to the U.S. and volunteer himself as a swap to the bad guys who want to kill him in exchange for the location of a presumed terrorist (the above mentioned Doctor Bashir, who naturally turns out to be a good guy after all), I guess he can kind of be categorized as mostly-dead for a wide variety of reasons. Why do I watch this show again?
You don’t think that spending half a day pondering which category of dead-ness a fictional character has to be in before chomping on someone’s throat is acceptable behavior could be a waste of time, do you? Naaaahh. Me either.
On the less gory side, American Idol started back up last night, and it seems to be just as full of entertainingly talentless people as ever. The first three weeks where they go around the country doing the auditions are just hysterical! Have a great week! Rachel
Written by Rachel Shubin ~ Fiendish friend for effusive fun!
Ahhh, we’re finally flu-free over here, which makes me very happy. I’m starting to feel moderately like things are slowing down-ish to a more manageable pace. Plus, Gymbucks redemption starts tomorrow, which is always a good excuse to shop. Actually, if you’re online late tonight, you’ll probably catch it then (try 9pm on the West coast and midnight on the East).
They’re talking snow here in our area again for this week, which means that every school-aged child in the whole city will wake up at 5:30 am to discover not snow but rather rain out their bedroom window and experience that sinking feeling that comes with the realization that instead of spending the day throwing snowballs at your sisters, you instead have to go to class like you do every other day. This happens about twice a winter or so in Portland. The occurence of actually getting snow is closer to .5 times per winter (you know, every other year…).
My son tells me every Christmas that he’s just sure that this year we’ll have a white Christmas. (I’ve lived here 31 years and can remember one white Christmas in all that time). Then when it doesn’t happen he gets all annoyed. It’s enough to make you want to move to Tennessee or somewhere. New Hampshire maybe! You know, wash your hands, your face, your hair in snow and all that stuff (doesn’t everyone watch White Christmas while wrapping presents?).
Handsome Hubby and I actually made it out on a date Saturday night. We had an excellent dinner at a little Italian restaurant, went to go find me some designer knock-off shoes at Target (I’m not paying $125 for shoes that will be out of fashion in a year or two! However, $25 I can handle.). Apparently designer knock-offs are only available in sizes that are two or more sizes larger than my feet. It was a short trip.
Following that, we went to a very dull movie called The Good Shepherd, which is basically two hours and forty minutes about why you should not join the CIA. You’d think that with all the intrigue surrounding that line of work, they could at least make a moderately intriguing film! Handsome Hubby, who usually is completely mute during a movie and insists that everyone around him do the same (namely, me), turned to me halfway through and asked if I had fallen asleep yet. After the movie we went to the grocery store. Because we know what romance is.
Hubby’s sister and her husband graciously watched the kids for us and somehow found it very perplexing that we went to the grocery store on our date. They have zero kids. We have five. Hey, when you need milk, you need milk! Try explaining to five tiny faces looking up at you why there is no milk for them to put on the bowls of cereal that they have proudly poured themselves. They also seemed further appalled upon discovering that our last date was in October. And we went went grocery shopping on our first date in three months. Okay, that’s kind of appalling even to me.
In any case, it was reeeeeeally nice to get out of the house for a few hours. I feel like a normal person again (almost) when we’re out. I hope it snows this week. Snow always makes me smile. Shoot, now I’m going to be looking out the window at 5:30 am.
Rachel
Written by Rachel Shubin ~ Fiendish friend for effusive fun!
How was your New Year’s? Ours was not the big party we were planning it to be mainly because Kyra thoughtfully infected Faith and Anika so we spent all weekend mopping up smelly nastiness and holding crying, feverish children. It was great! Let’s do this every weekend (that was sarcasm in case you’re new to sarcastic people).
Anyway, I will spare you further details because trust me, you don’t want them. This is a pretty bad bug that seems to hang on for a good four or five days before its host feels well enough to move further than the couch, bed, or bathroom. Surprisingly the older two kids and Hubby and I haven’t gotten it. I’ve been feeling not quite right for a couple days now, but haven’t exactly been symptomatic so I’m praying that it doesn’t turn into full blown yuck. Wouldn’t that be nice!
Written by Rachel Shubin ~ Fiendish friend for effusive fun!
