In which I confess to one of my obsessions...

From a news article today: "One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year — half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven." They quoted a woman who had read 70.

I wish they'd polled me. In the last year, I read over 200 books. I'm not kidding. I've keep a list because I was tired of checking out books at the library only to discover I had read them before. Thanks to the internet, I can look up best sellers and new releases, then request them from the library. I still buy a few books, like Harry Potter, of course. (Speaking of Harry Potter, Ernest was the first person in our small town to get Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But he hasn't finished it yet. Inconceivable.)

This may be why I do so little else!

Stiff Upper Lip, Mum

Frank is in England, Ernest is in France. Frank is in the country on a homestay. Ernest just finished a day at Disneyland Paris. Frank will arrive in London on the 5th, Ernest on the 8th. I am terribly a little bit worried about London due to the car bombs incidents there. But I know their tour organization is vigilant about keeping the students safe.

So I must keep that proverbial stiff upper lip. It fluttered a little after I left Ernest. The last photo I took was the back of his head, with his hair glorious hair, at the top of an escalator.

Ernestly yours...

Ernest has been busy since school ended. He spent 4.5 days at Science Camp... I picked him up Friday, then we went out to dinner with HH and saw Norah Jones at the SBBowl . Some of her music relaxed Ernest after his long week and he fell asleep.

Sat he had a P2P meeting. Then 6+ hours at a birthday party (video games and Chinese food).

Sunday, WoW time in the morning; a visit from cousin Michelle and family with her new dog, Basil, in the afternoon.

Monday (today), we headed south to shop for his trip (he is leaving Thursday). We were lucky at K-Mart and found a suitcase with 360 degree swivelling wheels. (There's no spell check. How many L's in swivelling???? I'm anal about spelling.)

I had a little teary moment after I left 16-year-old Frank at the airport. How bad will it be when I leave 11-year-old-Ernest? Sometimes he seems like a wise old man in a boy's body, but he is still my baby. My sweetie pie.

Frankly departed

Yes, Frank had to cut his hair. (But not enough for Locks of Love.) I think he was happy to have an excuse to do so. He reinvented himself the day after when he dressed for school. Instead of the black T-shirt and black jeans, he wore a white T, blue jeans, and plaid flannel (Cobain-ish) long sleeve shirt. He said some friends didn't recognize him. Others did. He eventually went back to black.

Now Frank has a girlfriend. Was it the haircut? The world may never know. I met her once last week... They sat on the couch together. He had his arm around her but he still had both hands on the video game controller. Multi-tasking. She wore black too. She seemed nice...

I seemed nice to my mo-in-law 29 years ago. I still am. She told me so.

Anyway, we will have a learning curve when Frank gets back...* balance the girlfriend time with the family time. I know I did not balance... It was so much nicer to hang out at the boyfriend's** house. The first time I went there, he had the whole family sanding the bondo on his MG. My house was just... stuffy, smelly (like old people), annoying. I hope it's not so bad for Frank. He seems well-adjusted and reasonably happy.

*He'll need a cell phone. He's one of the few juniors who doesn't have one. But he hardly ever calls anyone. Any he doesn't talk! But if he is driving to the girlfriend's house 20 miles away, he need a phone so I can track him down.

**The boyfriend since 1977 Star Wars has been the Handy Husband since 1983.

Frank left for France on Wednesday. He'll be back [speak that in Arnoldian] on July 8th. He left a message yesterday. "I'm in France. I saw the Louvre. Bye." Truly, there were a few more words but that was the gist.

Try the Whine

Where have I been? I don't know. For months I have felt isolated, depressed, and have not wanted to talk, or write, or blog. Does anyone read me anyway? Whine, whine, whine.

10-12 inches

Frank (the 16-year-old) has to get a hair cut, to meet the dress code for his trip. I'm sad. I've enjoyed watching his hair grow this year. The HH nags every once in a while, and I say "don't you remember when you had long hair???" Frank's hair is not quite long enough to donate to Locks of Love. Well, it is 10-12 inches long from the roots, but then he would be completely shorn. I don't think I want a skinhead child. Been there, done that, when he was in second grade.

Blissful Cooperation

Surprisingly, I had a nice spring vacation with my family. "The FAM" as my German opera friend says. (Give me a pseudonym and I will talk about you too!) On vacations a few years ago, the kids (currently 16 and 10) would bicker and battle and I would regret ever having planned a family trip. Things changed last year: We spent a week in New York, saw 4 Broadway shows (Spamalot, Odd Couple, Pajama Game, , Lion King). And museum(s) and Top of the Rock and Empire State Building and ... on and on. It was great. We didn't have to do kid-centric things, except that Ernest and I did ride the Ferris Wheel in ToysRUs at Times Square.

Anyway, Frank and Ernest have been getting along really well lately. Sharing time on World of Warcraft (yes, I caved in and got it but Frank agreed to do certain chores to "pay" for it). Sharing Frank's Xbox 360 in the living room. Agreeing on which video game to rent from GameFly.

This year our Fam took a short (3-day) vacation, stayed on the Queen Mary. Ernest loved exploring the ship, especially at night when we looked for ghosts--didn't see any except for the special effects show down in the bowels of the ship. We also visited the Aquarium of the Pacific and the harbor around Long Beach. The Handy Hubby was really interested in the preparations for the Long Beach Grand Prix. Lots of concrete barriers, chain link fences, and stacks of tires. (Oh, that's why the next weekend was unavailable on the QM hotel reservations! Now I get it.)

Mortality

I've had few words this month. I had raging PMS half a cycle ago. Desperate depression combined with work stress. I wrote an angry raging blog but common sense made me delete it the next morning.

But my recent angst pales in comparison to the news I got last night.

One of my best friends, a Rose Sister, a Sovereign Friend, who grew up across the street from my husband, just had surgery for colon cancer. She is only 46 (my age.)

I'm not a praying person, but for maybe the third time in life (once for my son, mysteriously ill for 2 months; a second time for another Rose Sister with a [thankfully] benign liver tumor; and now for this dear friend, I am praying: please let her be all right.

Elf Vomit

There's a house for sale across the street. We were lookie-loos on Sunday afternoon and walked in to a paralyzing cotton candy aqua blue. Other rooms were cotton candy pink, c. c. lavender, and then I either had a seizure or mentally blocked out the last color. I described this to my brilliant niece (who needs to blog some more but she just got a promotion so she is too busy) and she summarized the color scheme as "Elf Vomit." (Googling "Elf Vomit" only leads to disgusting Christmas decorations, but hopefully we can start a new thing here.) I think the sellers would not have had to reduce the price 40K if they had only painted everything a neutral color. Of course, there still were the multiple mirrors in the living room and dining room, the different 70's colored carpets in every room, and the funky additions.

We would love to buy a fixer-upper in the neighborhood, but this was too much fixing for the price. My departed mom's house looked better, even before the Handy Husband remodeled it. Since she never did much to it, she didn't mess it up too much.

The funky addition on my mom's house was a family room, added sometime before she bought it in 1970. The prior owners apparently did not care about codes: the studs were 24" apart and there was no insulation. And no record of the addition. The county assessor grandfathered it during the probate process. The HH fixed all the problems. My mom's house is now a new house in an old skin, and we will probably retire there.

Our own house had a funky addition: our bedroom. The original owner was into salvaged material. Some things in the bedroom are really cool: redwood paneling from a church in Lompoc, stained glass from a Stanford mansion (OK, I was told the glass came from a Stanford mansion and I have no proof or provenance, but it's still a good story), and a good luck horseshoe. It has strangely shaped closets and cupboards, tucked into nooks and crannies.

A confession: One cupboard has been screwed shut with a drywall screw because it contains a collection of adult videos we acquired from my late uncle's basement. Why did the HH resort to such a drastic containment? Hiding it from the kids? Or temptation?

The HH added his own salvaged material to the house (3/4" pine flooring from a high school in Arizona), repaired what was rotten (the pine deck outside,) and remodeled what needed it (kitchen and master bath.) Kudos to the Handy Husband.

There was some point to the end of this blog, but I inadvertently deleted it last night. Something about ugly wallpaper. I could go on for hours about that. So I won't.

The moral of this post must be: don't allow elf vomit in your house, or at least cover it up when you leave.

ISFJ

You Are An ISFJ

The Nurturer: You have a strong need to belong, and you are very loyal. A good listener, you excel at helping others in practical ways. In your spare time, you enjoy engaging your senses through art, cooking, and music. You find it easy to be devoted to one person, who you do special things for.You would make a good interior designer, chef, or child psychologist.

What's" Your Personality Type?

I took the Myers/Briggs personality thingie more than 10 years ago. I still have the same personality type. This blurb is totally me. Although there may be other facets to my personality....

The Mommy Guilt Post

Admit it. You all have it, all the moms who are reading this. It's Mommy Guilt. You have that niggling fear in the back of your mind, but you push it aside. Then days or weeks or months later it craps on you. And you realize you were RIGHT! You should "trust your feelings, Luke." Except Luke's NOT A MOM!

Remember my nightmares about "Ernest" going to camp? (No Ernest movie jokes, please.) Because six years ago "Frank" came home from camp and was sick for two months. That Mommy Guilt was because I couldn't ever find out what was wrong. Two months of Mommy Guilt is too long.

Now, my sweetiepie Ernest has had a cold for a while. I lost track of how long. This morning he descended the stairs and said, "Mom, my chest is growling." WTF???? I put my good right ear to his left lung and heard this disgusting growling wheezy chunky slushy noise inside. I looked at the calendar and realized he had had this cold/cough/ickiness for a whole month. MOMMY GUILT!!! (Backstory: A girl in my second grade class just returned after a bout of pneumonia.) I kept my cool and called the doctor's office. A recording. A recording. Again a recording. Another recording. Twenty minutes after they were supposed to open, I got a human voice and made an appointment.

Ernest's chest wasn't growling etc. by the time he got to the doctor's office. But it was nasty enough to get antibiotics...see prior post for that ordeal.

Reflecting, I really didn't see any serious symptoms until this morning. But you can't stop the Mommy Guilt. (Although in my defense, today was the first time Ernest said anything that made me worry!)

76 Cents a Minute

I hate, I mean... tolerate insurance companies. (Why can't I do that cool crossing out font I see on other blogs?) I can say that. I worked for an insurance company for 15 years. We were pretty good. There was always a live person on the phone who could solve your problem. Of course, we were only a life insurance company. Each policy would have one claim, the ultimate claim. Baby, don't fear the reaper.

HH (Handy Husband)'s company just changed health insurance providers, effective 3/1. He filled out the paperwork early last week. Of course Murphy's Law went into effect and I had to take "Ernest" to the doctor. (The Mommy Guilt post will have to come later.) We have no insurance cards yet, all we got was an e-mail with the group number.

I spent 20 minutes at the doctor's office while they updated their new computer system, before they could see Ernest. I took him home, then spent an hour and a half at Rite Aid trying to get the prescription. Let me emphasize it was not Rite Aid's fault.

There was no record of us with Blue Cross. The prescription had to be relabeled, so they asked me to return in 15 minutes. There is NO cell phone signal in that store, so I ran another errand and called my HH. His HR person was out sick, so we didn't think we could resolve this until Monday. I decided to pay the $209.99 price because Ernest needed his antibiotic now. It was still not ready. I waited longer, I paid the $209.99, then they took it away from me. What was going on? I waited some more. Eventually, someone told me they were talking to Blue Cross and the insurance agent. Did I have any more shopping to do? No. I sat in their waiting room and watched my feet swell. I chatted with two co-workers waiting for prescriptions. I read a Men's Health Magazine because that's all there was. I watched a child play with the blood pressure machine. Eventually they called my name. They had gotten the insurance info and now I only had to pay $141.68. A savings of $68.31. Or, 76 cents for every minute I sat there. At work I only make 15 cents a minute. Comparatively, I guess it was worth it. My feet didn't think so. They would have gladly paid $68.31 to go home and take their shoes off.

What happened while I waited with no cell phone signal is that HH's HR person was monitoring her e-mails from home, she immediately contacted their insurance agent who called HH, insurance agent called Rite Aid, other calls ensued, but no one could call me because there was no signal!, and Rite Aid got the information (at least for Ernest) that they needed. A lot of scrambling, so 90 minutes isn't to bad to accomplish a minor insurance miracle of getting a person into the insurance company's computer system.

Today I Bit the Bullet

Today I bit the bullet, swallowed my pride, sucked it up, went the whole nine yards, jumped the shark... and bought reading glasses. I talked the talk, but can I walk the walk? I'm struggling with them. My brilliant young son Ernest says, "It might be that your brain just doesn't want to accept that you have to wear reading glasses." He's totally right. They do make things clearer, but I'm still in denial.

Vandalism

There was an unusual round of vandalism in our small town neighborhood Friday night. Ernest and I were out of town; this is what I learned when we got home. Someone went around our neighborhood puncturing car tires. Handy Husband discovered this in the morning when the police came a-knockin' on our door. Many cars were hit. A dog-walking neighbor reported to the police that a number of teenagers had been hanging out at an empty house in the next block.

Only our truck was in the street, and it needed new tires anyway. HH had fortuitously parked the sports car (which just got new tires a few months ago) in the driveway. HH was talking to the next door neighbor yesterday, and learned that his next-door neighbors had been robbed a while ago, and their next-door neighbor had a peeper in the backyard. What happened to my nice safe neighborhood where nothing has happened for 19 years? We've never had any disturbances before.

Where Have I Been?

I have no idea. I was in such a funk the week before Ernest left for camp...worrying about that, work, snoring husband, nightmares, insomnia, and I can't even remember what else.

Ernest came back from camp with nothing worse than a cold. A three-week cold. Handy Husband caught it too, which made his snoring even worse. I've been taking Airborne and vitamin C and haven't caught it yet.

Semi-Empty Nest Syndrome

Younger son "Ernest" is off for 3.5 days at Science Camp. Smalltownmom has been on tenterhooks the last week. When older son "Frank" went to Science Camp six years ago, he was sick for two months after he got back. Tested for mono, twice, both negative. Tested for other things too. But his symptoms most closely resembled mono.. so I think that's what it was... Two months of intense stress. I have been reliving that in nightmares this last week. So I sent "Ernest" with lots of hand cleaner and wipes, even though they won't do much good and I am not normally germophobic.

Can't wait to see him Thursday at noon!

Two things fixed

The plumbing issues have all been fixed. Handy Husband (I do love that name!) replaced the faucet last weekend. We used to have a really expensive german faucet because we were german plumbing snobs. Now it's a home depot price pfister. Well, phister still sounds german. I am half german, it is OK if I like german faucets.

We never resolved the DVD issue, but "Frank" did get the computer to school.

And most importantly, I now have a coffeemaker with a timer. Now all I have to do is remember to fill it the night before.

But I have just realized there is a Frank and Ernest comic strip. Not a really good strip. (I looked at two weeks worth.) So now what can I call my sons?????

My Second Kiss

When I'm bored I start clicking the next blog button. Today I came across two women talking about their first kiss: Metro Mama and Sunshine Scribe. My first kiss was a nice thank you after a Sadie Hawkins dance.

It's my second kiss that rocked my world.

Let's enter the Way-Back machine, to the fall of 1977. This cute boy, who I'd been crushing on since 6th grade, asked me to a barbecue and I turned him down. Then I felt bad about it and called him up (brave shy me) and invited him to go see Star Wars. There was no theater in our small town then, so we had to drive 40 miles. Partway through the movie the projector broke down.

Then he made his move. We kissed in the dark theater until the film started again. And the earth moved. And there were fireworks. And history was made. And he's been my Handy Husband for many years. A happy ending. How rare is that?

This was a Princess Bride kiss: “Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.” OK, maybe this one wasn't so pure. But it changed my life.

Theremin

Some time ago we saw a documentary on theremins. This unusual instrument fascinated the Younger Son (I could also call him Curious George) and he has wanted one ever since. For Christmas, he got his wish and received a theremin kit. Last weekend Handy Husband, the electronics whiz, borrowed a soldering iron from work and they put it together. Anyone need sci-fi sound effects? It can also meow like a cat.

To hear what a beautifully played theremin really sounds like, check out http://www.peterpringle.com/pg1.html.

Pseudonyms

Blog names.

Some bloggers have really great pseudonyms for their family:

Drunken Housewife and her Sober Husband
The Twat
Petite's Tadpole
Mooselet's Hermit, Teen, and Tween

Now, I like the sound of Handy Husband, because he really is one. I was toying with Frank and Ernest for the kids, because the older one is pretty frank, and the younger one is earnest. I've also called them Alphadog, Betadog, and Gammadog. But I don't think they would like being called dogs on a regular basis. Or I could use their real names...I don't think I'm going to write anything incriminating. Maybe embarassing.

Maybe my one regular reader can weigh in here...