Doodles has a boyfriend

So Doodles goes to karate camp last weekend and comes home with a boyfriend.  I heard the news soon after I arrived to pick her up, but not from her.  A couple of the instructors relayed the story to me.  I didn’t tell her I knew, but she was foolish if she thought that nobody would tell me about it.  I kept asking her about camp on the way home.   She cheerfully told me all of the things they did leaving out one key event.  Later that day, I asked her some more about camp and she kept leaving out the fact that she got a boyfriend.  Finally, not able to take it anymore, I told her that I heard she has a boyfriend.  She admitted to it, but left out all details.  As I heard it, The Boy knocked on the girls’ dorm door and asked to see Doodles.  The other girls had to push her out the door, and then the two of them sat outside and talked.  He asked her if she wanted to go out and her response was “Sure.” 

The Boy is the tall one in the black uniform. Notice the space between him and Doodles. Picture taken with iphone.

Yes, she is not quite 13 but this is one of those cute, innocent little relationships. The Boy goes to our church and takes tae kwon do with us.  He is a sweet boy.  Doodles and The Boy are so cute together.  But now I have realized that we are moving into an entirely different phase for the next 10-20 years.  The dating years.  I have had to listen to her beg for her own cell phone even more than before so they can talk and text each other whenever they want.  He has a phone on AT&T so I told her she can call him anytime on my new iphone because it’s free.  But they want to text too.  Well, the cell phone that I have for my low paying job at the karate school has unlimited texting so she can text on it all she wants.  The Boy is still getting confused about which number to call on and which to text to, but I have faith that he’ll get it figured out.  She can e-mail him anytime too - from her computer or my iphone.  It’s so cute how they call and text.  Which of course makes me think back to the days when I was young and liked the boys - I still like boys, but you know what I mean.  I asked to call a boy one time and my mom actually called me a “brazen little hussy” for wanting to call a boy.

well, I did it

After not sleeping well Thursday night, fretting about whether I should spend a large amount of money on something for myself, I got up early Friday morning and went to the AT&T store. Boxman has been wanting to buy me an iphone since before Christmas. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending so much money on a toy for me. When they announced the new iphones were going to be half as much, he decided that I was definitely going to get one. Then he had to be out of town on July 11 and couldn’t go buy one for me. I had to overcome the guilt, get out the credit card, and pay for it myself. I just have such a hard time doing that. When I got my laptop, I actually had to send Boxman to the store without me to buy it because I wouldn’t have been able to spend the money. So, after not sleeping well Thursday night, I got up at about 6:45am almost hoping that I would be too far back in line and wouldn’t get one. Since Boxman and Doodles weren’t home, I had to get Buster up and take him with me. We arrived at the store around 7:30 to find between 20 and 25 people ahead of us in line. I started to get more excited about it waiting in line. What really irritated me was that none of the AT&T employees would tell us how many iphones they had. Everytime they were asked, we were told they didn’t know. Liars. I will say that they were kind enough to bring out bottled water for anybody who wanted one. At 8am, the first group was let into the store - one person per register. It was all very organized and calm - but they still insisted on locking the door after each person entered or left. A bit after this, a man came out asking each person in line if they wanted an 8g or 16g phone. He disappeared for awhile and then came back out to inform us that they only had enough 8g phones to go a couple people ahead of me. Boxman kept telling me to get the 16g, so I wasn’t bothered by the fact that they were running out of the 8g. I was humored that they had so many more 16g than 8g - what a way to up-sell. At about 8:35, it was my turn to go in. The man asked me what color I wanted and grabbed the iphone for me first. Since I was already an AT&T costumer and my contract had expired back in February, there was no problem with doing the upgrade and it barely took 5 minutes before we were out of the store. He did warn me that the calling plan might not be right and he would check on it later and leave me a voicemail. Well, it was definitely messed up but I didn’t know how badly until the next morning. It took forever to get the phone activated because itunes couldn’t handle all of the new iphones being activated at once. I was not able to activate my phone until late in the afternoon. Once it was activated, the voicemail was not functioning and I could only get on the internet using wi-fi. In the meantime, Buster took control of the phone and started downloading every free game he could find which was a surprisingly large number. We headed back to the store on Saturday morning and found that somehow I had ended up with the unlimited minutes plan and no data instead of the 450 minutes with unlimited data and visual voicemail. The woman at the store was very kind and helpful and called tech support to get it all taken care of. She also added about 4000 roll over minutes to my account since my old ones had disappeared. I’ll never use that many anyway. I left the store happy with my fully functioning iphone. Buster and I have had a ton of fun playing with it. Now if only I could figure out how to get my own ringtones on it. I followed some directions I found on line for making my own and it looks okay in itunes, but when I sync it up, they don’t show up on the phone. If anyone has any tips for that, I’d appreciate it. In the meantime, I’ll keep enjoying all that it will do. And I’m feeling a little less guilty, at least until that first bill comes.

reason number 36

There are lots of reasons why I like Boxman working from home.  Sometimes I have to make sure he realizes this, especially if there is a trip looming in his near future.  Today was reason number 36 on the list.

I noticed a lizard on our hearth room ceiling.  Yes, a lizard on the ceiling.  After letting out a relatively minor squeal over it, I went and told Boxman.  He suggested I get a stool to use.  I got a stool, and a shoe box, and even the flyswatter.  I climbed up ready to just scoop the little thing into the box.  It had other plans.  After two attempts, it fell down.  It landed on me.  Let’s just say that Doodles and I both let out a much louder squeal.  This got Boxman to come out of the office.  The little thing ran under the couch so we moved it.  I made another try with the box and flyswatter but the lizard was not cooperating.  Obviously it had no clue that if he would just crawl into that box, he would be released into a much less hostile environment for him.  This was when Boxman took control of the situation.  The lizard had moved and was now under the ottoman.  In moving it to get to the lizard, Boxman apparently set it on the lizard’s tail.  He picked it up and asked what it was.  Have you ever seen a freshly amputated tail from a lizard?  It was in the shoebox moving all by itself!  It was no longer attached to the body and it was still moving.  Yuck.  And I had to stand there and hold the box with this tail in it.  Then Boxman swept in for the capture and picked up the little thing and deposited it into the box with the missing tail.  Fearful that it was going to get out of the box before I got it outside, I sprinted for the door.  Whew.  I made it.  I released the tailless lizard as well as his still moving tail into the grass with a final good riddance farewell.  He didn’t seem to be moving, so I poked at him a bit with the flyswatter that was still in my hand.  I’m doubtful that he survived the ordeal.  If only he had cooperated with me to start with….  Had he tried to make our house his home, I have faith that the cats would eventually get off their lazy behinds and made him into their latest toy.

So that is why I’m glad that Boxman was working from home today.  Who know what would have become of us all had he not been here to capture that little thing.

life this summer

So what ever happened to the lazy days of summer? I long for days of guilt-free hanging out, doing absolutely nothing. It’s not happening here for several reasons. First, do you know how hard it is to sit around doing nothing while Boxman is in the office working away to support his family financially? I’m filled with guilt if I’m not cleaning the house, planning school, or something else somewhat productive. So, here are the things that have been keeping me busy and away from updating my blog.

1. I’ve had to do the financial statement for the dance company that Doodles is in. I’m the treasurer for the company, so it was my responsibility. It’s one of those non-paying jobs.

2. I’ve started the Couch to 5K running program. I realize that this in itself doesn’t really take that much time - basically half an hour, 3 times a week. However, I have had to spend time talking myself into doing it everyday, researching running shoes, and trying to convince myself that I can learn to love running. I’m on week 3 for day 5. Yes, there are only 3 days in each week of the program but I had a nasty cold the past several days and week 3 was really hard when I wasn’t sick so I decided to do it again. Did I mention that I hate running? What has been really cool about doing this program is seeing the difference in my stamina at tae kwon do. The senior master keeps commenting on how much better my forms have been. I told him what I’ve been doing and he told me we are going to sign up and do a 5k race together. And I’m only on week 3! Seeing and feeling that difference will really help keep me motivated even though I hate running.

3. My new, low-paying job at our tae kwon do school is taking up some time too. I have gotten phone calls at all hours. I think the one at 4am was a wrong number, but the one at 6am was not. I turn the phone off at bedtime now and it doesn’t get turned on until I think of it the next day. I’ve gotten better at handling the phone calls. I had my first 2 hour training session on the computer system we use. Apparently the master has not really learned much at all about how to use it and the man I’m replacing didn’t set things up completely or correctly. This means that I have to go through all of the contracts entered, after I get everything else set up right, and make sure that the billing is all being done properly. It will probably take a lot of time. The system is a little more complicated than we need for our school right now, but he is working on growing the school. In the meantime, he has told me that I am already doing a far better job than the last guy. The fact that I have a business degree and was a computer programmer in my previous life might help. I did learn that I absolutely must remember to charge new students the $25 registration fee or I won’t get paid as that is basically my money. I have had to go back and ask a couple people for it because I forgot. Ooops.

4. I have to sneak time to plan a vacation without the kids’ knowledge. We want to surprise them. I actually have it booked, but apparently there is a lot to know and plan ahead of time for the magical place we are going. I bought a rather thick book that tells you everything, but I can only read it after the kids are in bed or when they aren’t home. I sneak on to various websites to research it too. I’m so excited.

5. I’m trying to get our next school year planned. Gone are the days of starting back up after the 4th of July. I need more break than that just to get everything bought, organized and planned. I already have some of Doodles’s stuff figured out because of Classical Conversations but I still need to fill in with some other things. Buster will be going with the flow for the most part as far as just continuing with what we’ve always used, except for a couple of new things we are going to try. I’ll try to post in the next week what our plans are so far.

6. I’ve been trying to follow Flylady again.  I used her method for a while several years ago and it really did help.  I don’t necessarily do everything she says and I refuse to wear shoes that tie around the house.  I will wear flip flops though.  I can’t say I’m very successful this go around with Flylady, but I’m not giving up yet.

So, there are my excuses for not being here much lately.  I will try to do better.

it’s blueberry time

I never was really a fan of blueberries until a few years ago.  Perhaps because I never really had fresh blueberries off the bush.  We had fresh strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries and I loved them.  Blueberries I could do without.  Then, we moved to Louisiana and they actually have pick your own blueberries places here.  The first time we went, I had no idea what to expect.  I was so excited to find how easy they were to pick - no bending over like with strawberries.  And they tasted so good right off of the bushes.  I was hooked.  So now, every June, the kids and I make at least a couple of trips and pick until the kids fuss too much about the sweat dripping off of them.  The other day, that amounted to 45 minutes of picking which gave us about 3/4 of a bucket and cost a whopping $5.40.  That might have bought a pint of them at the store.  Boxman went with us on Saturday morning.  It had rained some so it was cloudy and a little cooler.  We ended up with a couple of buckets worth for $13.  Did I mention how much I love blueberries now that I’ve had the fresh stuff?

So, we have been eating lots of blueberries.  We have made and devoured 3 batches of muffins and had them in pancakes for fathers’ day.  Yummy.  We’ll eat some more fresh and I’ll make at least a couple of more batches of muffins.  I’m known for my blueberry muffins around here.  I always get at least one call or e-mail in June from someone who has lost the recipe.  I went to the dentist for a cleaning once and the hygienist informed me that she had my blueberry muffin recipe.  I didn’t even know this woman outside of the dentist office!  Because I want everyone to enjoy blueberries as much as I do, I’m going to share the recipe here.  And if you don’t have some fresh berries available, feel free to use some frozen ones - they are almost as good.  If you are on a diet, perhaps you should just eat the plain blueberries and forgo the muffins because things that taste this good are not good for you.

Blueberry Cake Muffins

• 1 3/4 c. blueberries
• 3 c. flour
• 2 c. sugar
• 1 T. baking powder
• 1 stick butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 c. milk
• 1 tsp. vanilla (I prefer Mexican vanilla, but use whatever you have)
• 2 T. melted butter

Put flour, sugar and baking powder in a large bowl and mix well.  With your fingers, squeeze butter into flour until it crumbles into pea-sized crumbs.  Put 1 cup crumbs aside.  To remaining mixture, add egg, milk, and vanilla.  Beat until smooth.  Gently stir in blueberries.  Fill paper lined muffin cups 2/3 full.  Drizzle melted butter over reserved crumbs and toss with a fork.  Sprinkle crumbs on muffin tops.  Bake for 25-30 minutes at 350.  Makes 2 dozen muffins.

so I got a job offer

I don’t go looking for jobs, they just find me.  Unfortunately, none of the jobs that have found me have paid much.  This one included.

We went to taekwondo last night and the owner/senior master called me over to talk.  He asked me if I wanted the good news or the bad news first.  I chose the bad news of course.  The bad news was that you can make a lot of money in that business.  He’s Korean and doesn’t always make a lot of sense, so I had no idea what he was talking about.  He then told me the good news was that he had fired the program director that had only been there for 2 months.  Of course that was leading up to him asking me if I would like to do it.  I won’t have to pay for our classes anymore, I won’t have to pay for my testing (but still pay for the kids’ testing), and I will get a commission based on every student that signs up.  Oh, and any karate gear I can get at his cost.  In return, I will have to answer phone calls, set up appointments, show up for the white belt classes since that’s when new people sign up, make id cards, enter their information into the computer, and set up billing.  He will provide me with a cell phone and a laptop.  Besides actually showing up at the white belt classes to sign up the new people, I can do the rest of the work at home at my convenience.

It’s the summer and I don’t have much else going on so I said yes.  However, I did warn him that if it was too time consuming and interfered with our lives too much when school started, that I might not be able to continue doing it.  I figure that gives me time to get it down to a system and see how much work it really is while giving me that easy out come fall, if I need it.

the flood

I’ve been following the flooding in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and I am shocked to see the pictures of the city. I was born there, I have family that lives in CR and nearby towns, and my parents, brother, and sil all happen to be visiting there right now for my cousins graduation and Eagle Scout Court of Honor. I can’t quite decide if I’m happier to be here rather than there right now. The last time I was in Iowa was last year for my cousin’s wedding. They had a huge ice storm while we were there. Perhaps it’s better that we stayed home this time. After reading up on the flooding, I was compelled to call my parents yesterday just to check up on everyone. Fortunately, the relatives I have in CR are either on high ground or the north side of town where they will hopefully be able to stay dry. I was mostly worried about my grandma who lives in a nursing home, but she is okay.

I saw the pictures of Quaker Oats and the railroad bridge. It brought back many memories of going with my grandpa in Big Red, as we called his truck, to take some grains to Quaker. We would usually chew our Big Red gum on the ride into town. Now, we will have higher cereal prices to look forward to as repairs are made to the building and railroad bridge. Never mind the fact that there are many flooded fields which won’t be producing as much this year.

I also had to check out the island that is home to the city hall, court and jail. Wow. It looks like some buildings sticking up out of the water.

I think the people of Iowa should be proud of themselves for how well they are handling the flood.  I only keep reading about how many people are helping and working hard to try to protect their city.  I hope the waters recede soon and the city can start to recover.

oh, rats.

We have a birdfeeder right outside the kitchen nook which offers us a great view of the birds. It generally brings us joy looking at the birds out the window. Last night as we were eating dinner, I looked out the window and let out a shriek. There, sitting on our birdfeeder was a rat! I hate rats.

As much as I hate them, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the little thing. I guess the safety of having a brick wall and glass windows between the two of us made me feel safe.

Apparently, scooping up the seeds that were on the bottom of the feeder weren’t enough for the rat. He decided to start eating out of it like the birds do.

By this time, I was really wishing we could get out the bb gun and take care of it. Eh, maybe the 22 would be better….

shop-a-holic

Generally women like to shop while their husbands follow behind wishing they could go back home.  I have the opposite problem.  Boxman loves to shop.  Me, well not so much.  If I have something specific to buy, I’ll go shop for it, buy it, and leave.  Not so for Boxman.  We started out going to Home Depot to look for some new blinds for our bedroom.  Doodles had accidentally broken ours a couple of months ago and I was tired of waking up with the bright sunlight shining in my eyes.  Of course we couldn’t buy just one set because they wouldn’t match the sun-yellowed blinds on the other window.  After seeing the cheapest real wood blinds that were the right size were $60, we decided to go look at Lowe’s.  They didn’t have anything that cheap in real wood, so we spent way too long looking at some bamboo blinds before deciding that they weren’t what we wanted.  We left to go back to Home Depot.  Luckily for Buster, it was 2:00 by that time so we stopped for happy hour at Sonic to get some half-price drinks.  We get back to Home Depot and Boxman can’t seem to just go get the blinds and leave.  We have to go look at the ant poison and water sprinklers too.  We ended up buying a few extra things besides the blinds.  By this point I’m tired and ready to go home.  The fact that it was 95 degrees outside and we took the car whose a/c doesn’t cool so well just made it worse.  We had to stop and return some movies to Blockbuster though - no big deal there, I jumped out of the car and dropped them in the slot.  Pulling out, Boxman starts thinking about the Memorial Day sales and decides that we need to go to Dillards.  I tell ya, we never buy anything at regular price there, but when they are having sales, you can get some really good deals.  I cave in and actually tell him we can stop there, but we aren’t going out into the mall.  I can’t even tell you how long we were there.  See, this man is not your typical shopper.  The first place he wanted to go to in the store was the fine china/housewares department.  He thought he hit paydirt when he found some Dansk Torun pattern steak knives for $1.87 each.  We already have at least 12 place settings of Torun, but no steak knives.  We now have 6 steak knives.  I thought this might be enough to satisfy his shopping needs but of course I was wrong.  We had to go look through the luggage, furniture and bedding.  He tried to talk me into some purple luggage.  I declined.  Then we had to try out all of the different mattresses they have.  Ours is heading on 20 years old and isn’t what it used to be.  We would probably buy one with our stimulus check from the government if we didn’t have more exciting plans for it.  After jumping on all of the beds, I had to talk him out of buying a down comforter that we don’t need.  By this time, I really, really want to go home.  Buster is in total agreement with me.  Boxman is still shopping.  He comes across some oversized bath towels and decides that the kids could use some new towels in their bathroom.  Okay, I can agree to that if it means we can go home.  Silly me.  Do you know how long it can take someone to decide on how many of what color towels to buy?  Eventually he decided to buy two different colors so we could decide which ones go in the bathroom better and just return the other ones.  I’m okay with this because I know he will be the one going back to return them.  The only thing I fear is that while returning them, he will see something else to buy.  I might have to go with him to rein him in.  On the way towards the car, we have to walk past the mens and kids clothing.  Somehow he passes the racks with the 75% off and another 50% today sales without having to try anything on.   Then he spots the boys dress shirts that are $3 and has Buster pick out a couple along with forcing him to get a $2 tie that he will probably never wear.  Because we can’t buy something for one child without getting something for the other, I grab a few pair of 50 cent underwear for Doodles.   I’m tired and just want to go home.  Buster and I finally get him to the hot car and we start towards home.   Yeah, we had to stop at the grocery store, which took entirely too long for the few items we bought, but we finally made it home.  Those new blinds look great.  The knives are put in the cupboard probably never to be seen again.  The towels are washed and hung in the bathroom.  And Doodles complained that the underwear are granny pants.  How does she know what kind of underwear her grammy wears?

we have a plan for next year

Well, sort of a plan. I signed Doodles up for Classical Conversations today.  There are a couple of girls we know from dance who go to this and they talked me into checking it out.  I like that it follows the classical model.  I like that once a week Doodles will be in a classroom with 11 other kids discussing the materials they’ve been studying.  I like that she will be involved in a mock trial with the other students.  I like that despite them going over materials and having a plan for the school year that I am still the teacher and can do what I want how I want the rest of the week.  I don’t necessarily like some of the resources that they use.  I don’t like how much it costs.  However, I might become a tutor with them which would not only give me a discounted tuition for her, but I could also make some money.

I think this might be what she needs this year as she was having a terrible time deciding about going to school.  I feel very good about it in that regard.  However, after signing her up, I felt so sad and immediately started questioning myself.  I guess the sadness is just for the things I had already started planning for us to do next year that I’ll have to either squeeze in or set aside.  I really can’t come up with any other reason for feeling this way.  I had no problems 2 years ago when I decided to use Calvert with her for a year.  I spent just as much money and strayed from the Well-Trained Mind more than this does.  Maybe it’s just me trying to accept the fact that she is growing up and her needs are changing in ways that I can’t always meet as well as I’d like.