Boys in Shorts

I think I've mentioned (okay, I know I've mentioned it) my inexplicable interest in professional cycling. At first I just watched the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong like everybody else with a passing interest. Considering I haven't been on a bike since sometime in the early 1980's, I'm not really sure why I like it so much but I am seriously considering running away with a pro cycling team when I get all these kids out of the house. I am so into it. I know the teams, the riders,the strategy, and so on.

I've been loving the daily coverage of the Giro d'Italia on Universal Sports (a new channel for us). I was glued to the Tour of California back in February and in July don't even try to get me away from watching le Tour (over and over and over....every single day, including rest days). Sadly, the Tour de Georgia was cancelled this year due to lack of sponsors, but hopefully it will be back next year and I can volunteer so I can figure out which team I want to run away with.

Anybody else have an "out of the mainstream" interest that makes people look at you like this...?????? My brother and brother in law are seriously into FIFA (soccer) and nobody gets why. They live in Nebraska, for goodness sake....Go Big Red (don't get me wrong, they're into that, too--my brother even wrote a book about it).

So tell....what's your "thing" that nobody else gets?

Transitional Housing

Remember "The Cosby Show"? Everytime one of the Huxtables would leave the house, someone else would immediately turn up with a guest in tow? Or they'd move somebody out just in time to move somebody else back in? Everything always seemed to be in transition.

That's how our house has been for the past 4 years. We bought this house almost 12 years ago, then immediately got slammed with kids activities 24/7 from that point on. And if you've been here awhile, you know that my 1964 ranch was/is a "fixer upper" no matter its desirable location. So while playing general contractor and sometime interior designer, with projects usually about 75% finished before moving on to the next fixer upper emergency, we never really got things settled before the in and out of kids started.

J1 graduated from high school in 2005 and at that time the girls shared a large bedroom with attached bath. The boys also shared a room with attached bath. There were two other bedrooms in the back wing of the house that shared one bath, however one had been turned into a huge laundry room by the previous owners (which was one of the reasons we bought this place) and the other was a guest room/office/stash crap out of the way room. Because when I went to college my sister threw her clothes in my dresser on top of mine and moved in to my room before I was 10 miles down the road, I established the "one year rule". Meaning, nobody moves your stuff out of your room for one year after you go to college. If at that time it is determined that you are never really coming back, then we'll figure something else out.

J1 really never came back, although her stuff lived in our living room and dining room the entire summer after her freshman year. She studied abroad (in Toulouse, France), so spent about a grand total of 4 weeks at home that year. So we moved her stuff to guest/office/stash room and J2 got full custody of the bedroom with a new queen bed. The next summer J1 worked abroad (in Lyon, France) for 3 months, making it back just in time for rush workshops and back to school. At the same time, J2 had graduated in 2007 and was also headed to Tech, leaving one empty bedroom with attached bath.

The boys, who were tiny 3 and 5 year olds when we moved in to the house, suddenly turned into much larger 13 and 15 year olds who couldn't get along in the same room if you paid them $1,000 a day just to be nice. So we have this large bedroom with queen sized bed sitting there empty, tempting them. But remember, we have the one year rule. Nobody moves in to your room for one year.

J3 decided that he was sleeping in that room in that big bed and that was that. Every night I would tell him to get out of there and he would sneak back in after I went to bed (can you see why I have problems getting along with this kid every stinking day?) Anyway, after awhile we just quit fighting it, and he was exiled back to his room when J2 came home for the summer.

Finally, sick of the fighting, we moved the girls to the guest/office/stash room and let J3 have J2's room, then bought J4 a queen bed to replace the twins in the former "boys room". So, to make a short story long, for the past four years, my house has been a freaking jumbled up mess of moving beds here and there, back and forth, painting and repapering bathrooms and bedrooms, hanging new curtains, getting new carpet. And I'm sick of it. Now the guest/office/stash room is piled to the ceiling with boxes, the basement is full of crap that won't even fit into the storeroom anymore. I have high hopes that by the end of the summer when we get J1 out of here that I can FINALLY turn my attention to some of the projects around here that are on my list. Like a master bathroom gut and re-do.

I think that's why I was temped by the thought of moving. It just seemed a lot easier than this contant moving piles of crap from point A to point B within this house. Of course, we'll just get everything 75% settled and start on a new project and it will be time for J3 to go to college. And then J4 will probably decide he likes that bedroom and bathroom better and will want to move across the hall.

And so on. And so on.

Finding a match, tossing it in and running might just be easier.


ETA: I know this is really long, whiny and dull, but I really feel like whining today ;-}

Moving Day

J1 is moving home today (sans loveseat, XL chair and washer & dryer). She's been bringing boxes home all week and the room she shares with J2--or should I say the room their stuff shares, since they never actually sleep there--is piled high along with a good start in the corner of the basement. I think we're just down to beds, dresser, desk.....and whatever else she needs to throw in.

I see the week ahead spent organizing, packing, packing and more packing before we send her off to Houston.

Pray for me.

Early Risers

Saturday morning, DOTR managed to entice me to get up for a trip to the Farmer's Market on the Square. While he hooked up with the sweet corn and tomato gal, I stopped at one of my favorite booths, Rinse. I bought a few things at the Mistletoe Market and I blogged about a couple of them back in February.

I picked up a few things, and today I just tried the new body conditioner. Basically, it's lotion without the water. You can use it right after you shower or in the shower to shave (just keep it away from the showerhead or you get...you guessed it...lotion, down the drain.) I love the light smell, it feels really soft and not at all greasy and slimy.

The peppomint foot stick is fabulous, especially now that it's flip flop weather. In fact, I haven't purchased one thing I don't love. My favorite is the Spearmint Lavendar scent...mmmmmm.

You can order online, read her blog, or if you're local....drop by the Farmer's Market on Saturday mornings.

Definitely worth getting up for, this week anyway. We'll see about next Saturday.

Our Daily Bread

It all started with a stop at Borders to use the restroom while I was shopping at the East Cobb Avenue. I wandered through the bargain books and came across a thick cookbook entitled "The Bread and Bread Machine Bible" for $4.99. It's one of those cookbooks that I love. British, from Hermes House publishing. Lots of photos. Very heavy on the reading--the first half of the book is about bread, the history of bread, different kinds of grain, a little bit about the science of bread making, and fully illustrated sections of every kind of bread made throughout Europe and North America.

This is the same book, but this is not the edition I got at Borders

Well, who could resist? Five bucks? Not me, that's for sure.

After a couple days of reading (and drooling) I dug out the old bread machine. Who still has one in the back of the pantry?? C'mon, raise your hand if you haven't sold it at a garage sale yet, but it's really dusty and there's no instruction booklet. BTW, you can find most manuals online...I couldn't remember the order of ingredients into the pan, so I had to look it up.



I made a trip to Harry's for fresh yeast and ground some whole wheat flour (that's whole meal in British-speak) and whipped up a loaf of Granary Bread (whole grain to us Americans). This was so easy. Why haven't I been doing this for the last ten years? J4 had never seen the bread maker, so maybe it's been more than 10 years.

Anyway, that loaf is history, so today I'm trying something else. Buttermilk? Anadama? Rye? The possibilities are endless.

Thank goodness carbs are back.

Half My Life

The better half, that is. With my better half.

Twenty-three years ago today, in a beautiful Lutheran church in the county seat, I married DOTR for better or for worse.

I'll have to say, it's mostly been better. After nearly six years of ups and downs, lots of tears dealing with "the worst boyfriend in the world", I got lucky and he suddenly turned into the best husband in the world.

I'm not the easiest person to live with. I'm a neat freak amongst slobs, I'm usually in a crappy mood, I can cuss like a sailor and I have no filter when it comes to letting you know what I think.

So thank you, Spanky, for always working hard and making enough money so that I could stay home all these years, giving me all these kids (what were we thinking....oh yeah, tequila!), taking me on trips around the world that I couldn't even have imagined when I was a green 23 year old from a town of 200 people in the middle of nowhere....and for putting up with me. I love you.

I think we're in for the long haul. A perfect match.

Happy anniversary.

Deals, deals, deals

We survived our shopping adventure. Growing up in a small town, shopping was always an all day affair that required strategy and stamina. You can tell my kids did not grow up far away from shopping opportunities, because we both lost steam shortly after lunch (and we didn't get there until about 10:30, when we had to stop for a scone and coffee before we even started!)

Luckily, we hit pay dirt at our second stop, the Banana Republic outlet, where everything in the store was 40% off. We found so many basics, including another suit with pants and a skirt. I took three piles to the checkout for holding while J1 made at least three visits to the dressing room. She's picked up a few things on clearance here and there the past month, so I think she should have a good start. Ann Taylor Loft outlet had great sales and she got a couple of really cute blouses there to wear under jackets for $9.99 each. A couple pairs of shoes, a brown Kate Spade bag (half price of the sale price) and a few accessories and we'd used our budget by 2:00. We had lunch and headed back home.

If you're in the North Georgia area, you may want to take a little trip up to the Premium Outlets this weekend. They're practically giving stuff away.

In two weeks she leaves for Houston, and after a week there goes straight to CT for her training class for 5 weeks. Then I think she spends a week in Dallas. Then we're fuzzy on just exactly when she's moving, but I have the summer to revamp some of our old furniture to send along. She gets a moving allowance that they deposit into her bank account, but if she doesn't spend it all she gets to keep it, so DOTR and I may end up taking her there so she can get some furniture as part of her "relocation costs". The girl has nothing--no dishes, small appliances, etc. I sure hope she hasn't blown all those graduation gift cards from Target on books!

In the meantime, J2 has started cleaning out her room at the sorority house and everytime she walks in the door she shows up with a bunch of bags or boxes. She's living there this summer, but is moving into apt. style housing with 3 roommates in the fall. Thankfully, the futon we got for J1 at IKEA her freshman year that's been in that room in the sorority house (J1 lived there for two years and J2 moved in with J1's roommate this year) is on its last leg...no pun intended...so it will go to the dumpster. So hopefully she'll be able to move home a few boxes at a time in her VW Bug. I am all for that (parking to move at an urban campus.....challenging).

J1 is moving everything but the loveseat, large chair and washer and dryer out of her apt. next weekend. This means beds, dressers, clothes, stuff, stuff, stuff.

So I guess what I'm getting at here is........WHERE AM I GOING TO PUT ALL THIS STUFF?!!

Smoking

Today J1 and I are going shopping at the North Georgia Premium Outlets. She needs "professional clothes", so we're off to get basics to get her started. Hope I don't melt the amex.

I guess this will be our last big outing together before she goes to Houston. It's hard to imagine that she won't be able to run home in 30 minutes--I guess I hadn't really considered that she wouldn't find a job here in Atlanta. On Wednesday we had lunch with her best friend and her mom. BF was a year older than J1 and they never went to the same school, but they bonded over ballet when they were 4 and 5 years old and that was that. They were really close during those horrific middle school years when smart and serious ballet dancers have a lot of difficulty with the social scene at school. She went to MIT for college and they grew apart, like you do when you're growing up and focusing on figuring out who you want to be..... but this past year when she returned to Atlanta for med school, it's almost been like old times. Her mom asked me if I was sad that she was leaving, and I am. But I'm happy, too. She didn't really get to "go away" to college, so this is our first experience with someone really leaving the nest. I'm sure it will be tougher than I think. BF's mom said those years when she was in Boston were really hard and now she's thrilled to have her back home. When we left them (after our 3 hour lunch!) they were off to shop for stuff for BF's new condo.

So, I guess today is one for the road. I'd better enjoy it while I can.

Coming in September

Hardcover, 480 pages

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
September 15, 2009

Me at a movie?

DOTR and I actually played hooky last Friday and went to the 1:00 show after my root day appointment.

Two thumbs up for the locations shots alone. DOTR hadn't read the book so he really liked the "surprise ending".

Have you seen it yet?

Bag Lady

I did a little shopping today while I was supposed to be working.

Tote sale at Lands' End.

Rerun

Is the 100 Things meme still going around? I did it last year, and I just looked at it again when I was looking for something else.

Here it is. Nothing has changed. Except #41.

And if you haven't done it yet, try it. You'll be surprised how one thing leads to another!

There's a Ying for every Yang

It's been awhile since I've had a good J3 story. As usual, whenever faced with a decision, his 16 year old brain always seems to come to the wrong one. But first, a little background.

Friday night, DOTR gave J3 his Braves tickets. The ones that cost a freaking fortune and are a couple rows behind home plate. Yeah, those. It's not like we have them for every game, in fact this year we have the fewest number of games since before J3 was even born. He used to buy all of them himself, then he split half with his brother, now he buys 1/4 and his brother then buys half of those. As the seats got better and more expensive and we got busier and unable to go (and the Braves got worse and nobody wanted them), we cut down.

So, back to Friday night. I didn't even know what J3 had cooked up until the day before the game. Evidently, he had smooth talked DOTR in letting him use the tickets and giving him permission to drive his Jeep down there with his 9th grade girlfriend, his buddy (who is a day younger than J3, which means they are equally immature 11th graders who were born in August and went to Kindergarten when they were barely 5!) and another 9th grade girl.

I did not think this was a good idea. Duh.

DOTR thinks "he has to learn how to do this sometime". What??? Drive to downtown Atlanta with a carload of 15 and 16 year olds, holding $400 worth of baseball tickets in his hand. Are you kidding me? This is the kid who lost DOTR's Amex between the gas station and the car wash place without getting out of the car. I'm thinking he can learn how to do this when he's 21 and that might be soon enough. Plus, I have seen plenty of pictures of teenagers "tailgating" at the Braves game when stalking Facebook, and it looks like nothing good happens.

Anyway, the other girl's mother says "no way" (smart lady), so they need to find somebody to take the other ticket. J3 asks a friend from the baseball team, but neglects to inform DOTR about the change in plans. He still thinks it's two cute little couples....young love and all that jazz. Anyway, I won't judge (okay, I will) but this particular friend has two older sisters who were basically drunk for the entirety of high school, so I'm not thinking this is probably the friend to be asking to come along. But nobody asks me, tells me or wants my opinion. J3 swings by the office to pick up the tickets, leaves friend in the car and DOTR is none the wiser.

So, here we are, enjoying a quiet Friday night at home. J4 is in his room, doing whatever it is that he does on his computer set up, and DOTR and I are watching the Braves and reading, respectively. The phone rings and it is J1.

Her roommate is at the Braves game and she sees J3 and his party escorted out of the game by the police. It seems his pinch hit friend tried to buy beer (he's in the 10th grade--OMG, boys are just so stupid). So, the cop takes friend to a holding area and they call his parents to come and get him. J3, 9th grade girlfriend and other buddy are kicked out of the game. We called J3 and he said "You're crazy, we're here at the game!" So DOTR called J1 again, who called her roommate at the game, who said "no, their seats are empty". Then he said, "well......yeah, K made a bad decision, but I don't think I should get in trouble, I didn't do anything."

Tell me, please.

What in hell are we going to do with this kid?

The Best News

J1 got a job--a great job!

She starts June 8 when she reports to Houston, TX to meet her new co-workers. She then will spend 5 weeks in Hartford, CT in training before spending a week in Dallas for claims training, after which she will officially move to Houston.

Some of you may have noticed this before from the link on my sidebar, but she was a featured blogger on the Georgia Tech Admissions blog, Knowing Changes Everything, for the last two years. She was also a freshman blogger her first year on a different admissions blog that is no longer online. You can see the details there.

We're excited....and a little sad. Because the girls didn't go "away" to college, this will be new for us. But I'm thrilled she'll get to experience a new city (I remember the excitement of moving to Atlanta when I was a 22 year old!) and have the opportunity to make her way on her own terms.

One down, three to go!

May Days

I found a little something on my nightstand, next to my cup of coffee on Sunday morning. An envelope from DOTR.

Inside, I found my Mother's Day and Anniversary (May 25) gift.

http://www.rosedon.com/about/review.html

Gotta love a travelin' man.

Let them eat cake

Or let me eat cake, anyway.

This cake was enormous and the guests didn't even eat half of it. Luckily, I have two teenage boys who think nothing of a piece of cake for breakfast, a little snack after school, dessert with dinner and a piece before bed. I may or may not be guilty of "evening up the row" here and there and I will come right out and admit I had a big piece (not a slice, mind you, but a big piece) for breakfast first thing Sunday morning.

We're down to the last corner and it's still delicious. Nothing like homemade yellow cake with real chocolate frosting. This was not from a can or a box, and it wasn't done in a commercial kitchen, so it's pretty darn close to heaven.

In case you can't tell from the pictures, it was a suitcase, with all kinds of "stickers" for the places he plans to go, along with a wrestling mat in the center, a big T for Tennessee (where he got his Master's and met his wife) and some ideas on what to do with all that spare time.

Some people are so creative and I bow down to them!

Lift them up

Please remember our bloggy friends, Lamp Tramp and Sweet Pea in your thoughts and prayers.

Construction Zone

For two weeks before we left for Maui, DOTR had the bright idea to have the driveway replaced. They were supposed to be done before we left (they were not). They were supposed to be done by the time we got home (they were not). They were supposed to be done by the time 150 people descended on us over two weekends for parties (they were....finally, and only after DOTR made one of them cry). I won't go into all the crap this dude tried to pull on us, but let's just say that those summers that DOTR spent putting up grain bins in Nebraska when he was just out of high school gave him great insight into just how much concrete we were supposed to get.....I pity that fool who tried to rip us off.

Well, now that's done, thank goodness. Sadly, our construction woes have just begun and we will spend the summer, and no doubt beyond that, suffering the reconstruction of a bridge between the entrance to our street and the next block on the right (out on the main road). They are starting the Tuesday after Memorial Day and hope to be done with the total closure by the time school starts again in early August. This means that I can't turn right for almost three months. I shudder to think how long the detour will take, winding us up around the hospital and beyond. Our street is one of the few along the road with no way out the back (remember, I live in an actual town, not just a bunch of subdivisions strung together off of a main road) so we're stuck. Major ickiness.

They've been moving the utilities in ancipation of the big project for the past couple of months, so we've already enjoyed plenty of one lane closures and waiting around. No fun. When we were in outer suburbia, we lived in the first house in the neighborhood during the construction of two additional lanes and a median in the main road out front (and thank you, Lord, that I don't live there anymore because people drive about 75 mph on that road now *Bells Ferry for you locals*....no clue how you're supposed to get out of the neighborhood) so I already know it's going to be a major, major pain. The good thing is that our office is a half mile in the other direction, so we're good there.

Just pray J4 passes math and I don't have to drive him through that mess every morning for 5 weeks. The high school is in that direction, of course.

Some fun.

Good times, good friends

Wow. That's all I can say about Saturday night. Wow.

At one point I think there were a hundred people around my pool. The party started at 5:00, really got rolling about 6:00, and was totally rocking between 7:00 and 9:00. The guest of honor and family left at 10:50, with everything cleaned up and put away. I was busy and only glanced outside briefly, but my SIL said there were cars down both sides of the block as far as one could see (luckily we live on the corner).

DOTR spent the day cooking three Boston butts for barbeque (it was delicious). It's almost funny because the menu was basically pantry, refrigerator and freezer cleanout. I had two heads of cabbage, red and white, two bunches of carrots and some spring onions from our CSA boxes that I made into coleslaw, a big crockpot of barbeque beans doctored up with a package of bacon, ham leftover from J1's graduation party and three very different styles of barbeque sauce I found in the back of the pantry. I had two red onions that were past their deliciousness for salads or sandwiches, so those were thrown in the pot as well. Several guests brought appetizers and a friend of the honoree made a fabulous cake (I have pictures--I will post them because it was an amazing cake and tasted great, too). And of course, we had to have wings in honor of our friend's native Buffalo. We had a keg, a few bottles of wine, and plenty of diet coke. The keg was emptied by dark, and we got into the Bud Light leftovers from last week's party for the diehards.

All in all, I think our friend was surprised by how well loved he is and how he'll be missed. It was a great night and I'm glad we did it for him.

But now.....my party queen tiara goes back in the closet for awhile!

Party Time Again

The retirement party is tomorrow night. Thankfully, it's not supposed to rain tomorrow. DOTR and I are off to Costco later to pick up supplies.

What's up with rsvp's these days? I made it easy for everybody by offering both a phone number and an email address. I sent out about 75 invitations and have only heard from half that many, if that. I'm guessing we'll end up with 75 people....or at least that's how much food and drink I'm buying. The phone rang off the hook the first couple days this week, but today there's been nary a call nor an email.

It's not that hard. Really. Are you coming? Or not?

See, that didn't hurt one bit.

Don't Cry for Me, Punta Mita

Okay, don't hate me for this. I'm even laughing at the irony.

So, you know we just got back from Hawaii. Maui, to be specific. And that we just went there for Thanksgiving. When we made the reservations for Thanksgiving last July, we had no idea that DOTR had qualified for the insurance sales incentive trip to Maui in April. In fact, he didn't even know the incentive existed until he had already qualified and received the invitation. So it was a surprise. A very nice surprise, to say the least.

He also qualified for a trip to Punta Mita, Mexico at the end of May. The day after our anniversary...very convenient. We were going to stay here. I was getting pretty excited about it, although two big trips in two months, with a college graduation, a visit from my mother and a retirement party sandwiched in between did dampen my enthusiasm a bit.

Then came this little thing called the swine flu. No trip to Mexico. Postponed with location and date TBA.

I seriously thought they were over reacting when they cancelled this trip three weeks before it was supposed to happen because of the swine flu (but what can I say, I still had a Hawaiian hangover). Now I'm really, really, really, really, REALLY glad they did. Really.

Because........I'm sure you can guess by now where we're going. September 12-18.

Maui.

Of course.

Crazy. Busy.

Wow, things are unbelievable around here.

Graduation was great. My buttons were bustin'. The party was awesome and an official offer on the "real job" should be coming any day now.

This week I have to start thinking about the retirement party. I sent out 75 invitations, so I'd better start thinking hard.

Be back soon.