Halls of Destiny

My view from the front hall this morning when I came downstairs.

So yesterday I was juggling several things, including work, odds and end sewing bits, watching the last 15 minutes of Homeward Bound with Leon and visiting with a college friend stopping by, when the blood bank called.  Apparently they're very low on my blood type and they call all the time for me to donate.  I told them that every spare minute and then some is being spent on the wedding.  So they'll put off calling me until later this month.  I may have enough iron/energy built up by then.

So in lieu of me giving blood, I'm asking you.  GIVE blood people!!!  

I got in the mood to give blood when my mom had several transfusions many years ago and still do when my iron is high enough.  They want me to start giving plasma or something that is in my blood but takes two hours to get it out.  I'm not sure I have the time to do that...  at least not this month.

I pulled out our roasters this morning before work and gave them a good cleaning.  Yikes, our garage can get dusty!  Not sure how we're going to feed 250+ people for the reception, but it will happen.  We've got a plan and will stick to it.  If you're sitting at the last tables, I'm sorry.

I've also got 25 coffee carafes, 2 three gallon drink servers, 4 tubs (for ice and two rootbeer kegs)(need a few more for the bottles of water), 50+ pitchers for the lemonade, 6 new roasters for serving, (may need more)(two serving table stations), 2 old roasters for kitchen use only,  24 table runners so far (there will be 9 more finished today), 40 table cloths, wrapped silverware for 240 with enough silverware to be tied up in paper napkins for the rest later, 150 yards of tulle, 2 110 cup coffee urns and so... soooo... much more.  Lots of extension cords and power strips, 300 feet of Christmas rope lights, yikes....

the wedding hallway.  It's branched into the wedding diningroom and entry way also. 

I think "I" need more blood.  Or at least an energy drink...  But those do funky things to my heart.  

I'll stick with artificially sweetened, liquid caffeine.

Sneezy math

Whew!  We ALL made it to April 2nd!!!  Did anyone get fooled good?!  The most I got pranked was a text from my daughter at 2:48am, but it turned out to be true.  So that doesn't count I guess...  

I WISH it had been a prank... :)

Nothing serious, don't worry!

But Maddy and her roommate Leah arrived last night around supper time.  Leon left just before they got here and his presence was missed.  But we had a good time visiting with the kids and talking over pizza and impromptu hair combing. 

I had a work meeting at 9pm and it lasted over an hour...  yuck.  Stupid time zones.  Came back into the house and lounged on the couches with the kids and talked for even longer.  

Got my pitcher of iced tea by my side today and ready to take on anything!!!  

Just not a bunch or anything hard, ok?

The girls are still sleeping on the couches as I type.  I will wake them up soon, as they need to go pick up Meri, who is coming home early because she doesn't feel good.  Can you believe she thought she could hang on until AFTER Algebra??  I mean, I did LOVE Algebra in high school, but if I wasn't feeling good, I wouldn't want to exacerbate my headache with Algebra problems...

Enjoy your Maundy Thursday!  Or as the kids call it, (Monday Thursday).  Meri, Maddy and I are doing a trio solo for one of the verses of a hymn at church tonight, then the rest of the choir will join in with us for the other verses.  We'll load up on decongestants and cough drops before we do... 

Wish me luck!  and a kleenex.

Spring Into Surprise

My kids have complained about their mattresses from their beds for years.  We've kind of grown accustomed to them complaining about lots of things, so I guess we started tuning them out... 

But Robb saw an ad for a memory foam mattress and got to thinking... 

He went ahead and ordered the mattress for Meri without telling her.  It arrived yesterday in a smallish box, so I wasn't very impressed with it.  But he assured me that it was compressed to fit in the box and it would go back to the original size of a mattress in a little while.

It's similar to this one, only with a white cover.

So last night when we got home, I found that it indeed HAD expanded and looked like a real mattress, but didn't really feel like one.  No springs at all!  Just a huge foam piece with a mattress cover on it.  So while Meri was doing her homework downstairs, Robb and Ryan swapped out mattresses and left her old one in my bathroom, shutting the door to surprise me later. 

In looking back now, we had gotten that mattress for Ryan's old bunk bed...  17 years ago...  No wonder she complained...  From what I recall, he did too over the years.

When it was time for Meri to go to bed, she balked.  She hated her bed, she told us.  She'd much rather go sleep on Maddy's trundle lower bed than sleep up in her loft!  Actually she even prefers to sleep on an over-sized gymnastics mat that we got her in preschool on the floor...  But Robb talked her into climbing up into bed anyway.

I almost blew the surprise by walking in on them and asking "So how did she like it?"

SSSSHHHHH!!!

As soon as she got to the top of the ladder, she started complaining about the mattress again.  "I don't want to sleep up here.  I hate my bed!! The sprin..."

"The spri..." 

"Hey!  This isn't my bed!!!"

Yes, yes it is...

Meri seemed thoroughly surprised!  And she slept all night without waking up once. 

It's always good to have a good night's sleep!  I wonder what that's like...

Twilight Barking and then some

I had a rough night...  Around 1:30am I thought I heard something.  With Ellie about to give birth, I was wondering if it was her.  Went out into the hall to hear again if it was the dogs.  Nothing.  Except I did see that the kitchen light was on, so I went down to make sure all the lights that need to be off are.

In the distance I can hear a dog barking somewhere out in the night.  sigh.  That's not going to help me get back to sleep.  Darn twilight barking!

I went back to bed and was surprised to be able to get to sleep again.

At 4:05am, two of my alarms went off.  Both one of my regular alarms and my cell phone because I have noticed that I can turn the regular alarm off in my sleep.  Aren't "I" talented!?  Went to make sure Ryan was awake.  He leaves for work very early every morning.  His cell alarm was going off and he was ignoring it.  I hit his foot.

Yeah yeah, ok...  and he held up his cell phone that he just silenced and said that he had that..  okey doke.  I went out to hall and waited.

5 minutes later his cell alarm went off again and suddenly it was quiet again.  I guess I'm not the only one who is talented in that department!  I waited a few minutes and went and hit his foot again.  If he was still a teen and didn't have a wife and baby in the same room, I'd have said out loud and loudly... HEY ARE YOU GETTING UP OR WHAT?!  But a foot smack is just as effectively ignored.

He held up his cell phone with a look...  as if that would wake him up and why was I bothering?  He looked disgruntled at me and whispered something about stretching.

I went back to the hall and waited....  5 minutes later his cell alarm rings again and again he turned it off in his sleep, so I went and smacked his foot again.

This must have happened a few times because by this time it's 4:20...  and as I waited in the hall after smacking his foot, I finally heard him get up and go into the bathroom.

Whew!  My work here is done!  So I went back to bed.  JUST as I lay my head down, my cell phone rang.  It was an emergency call for work...  Good thing I was too exhausted to have taken off my bathrobe!  So I headed out to my office to help a client get their computer back up and running.

That took just over an hour.  By that time I figured, what's the point?  My regular alarm was going to go off at 6am anyway...  So I made myself a cappuccino and watched the rest of Kramer vs Kramer on Netflix before waking up the girls.  I was just fine until that little kid started crying about not living with his daddy anymore and where would the little boy sleep...?  *sob*  Now my bedsheets are soaked with tears.

Nothing like the quivery chin of a little boy to get you going for the day!

This happened yesterday morning...

My young man is so funny.! He got $20 gift early for his 19th birthday, coming up this weekend, so he put most of it into his car as fuel... The rest he purchased a couple 2 liters of Mountain Dew to fuel himself. I was very surprised to see him this morning as I prepared for work. It's 7:30am and I'm seeing Ryan before the crack of noon??? He had already showered... hmm. what's up?

Specifically, why is HE up already? And I asked him that very question. His answer... "I haven't been to bed yet!" He drank Mt. Dew all night off and on and said that he felt GREAT! He helped himself to some food and then suggested to Meri that they watch some more Avatar, the Last Airbender episodes this morning so they could be prepared when the movie comes out in a couple weeks. She was thrilled! She LOVES doing things with her big bro! Especially if it's Avatar related...

On a separate note... This is NOT the blueman group version of Avatar. Avatar the last airbender (trailer here) is a kids cartoon that they're making into a full featured movie in July. The little boy who plays Aang, the lead, is an ATA Taekwondo black belt in real life! The same as me! Only he's probably got a few more bars on his belt... and judging from the previews so far, probably practices between classes...So Ryan said he felt awesome and planned to stay awake all day and go to bed at a decent hour tonight. Cool!

So I went out to work. Pleasantly surprised and thought, Wow, Ryan is going to sleep well tonight and perhaps get back on a real sleeping schedule again... He stays up most nights on FB and playing computer games, so this could be kind of nice...

I went back into the house to find out why Meri hadn't come back with the camera yet and found my son... Unconscious & snoring softly on the couch and Meri watching her fill of Avatar all by her lonesome...
You may think I'm mean to post this... and you're right. I've done this before...

and yes... I AM a Scary Mommy...

They're so cute when they're sleeping...

My little boy hasn't changed all that much after all. He's still pretty adorable when he's asleep... in the pic below, he fell asleep on our couch with his pacie in his mouth, fiddled with it while he drifted off and left it for safe keeping on his head.
18 years later...He got in very late last night and crashed on my office futon. He's woken up once but fell back asleep when I ran the girls to school. So I'll just leave him there until he's ready to go inside. I'll be quiet while I work... sshh...