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It has been a heavy month. One of the things I should just put out there, is that the criminal complaint we filed against the teenage girl who was texting while driving and subsequently killed my father was rejected. There is nothing more we can do.

Before any more outbursts or whatever happens, I want to state that I don’t want to talk about it. I am going to be one of those classic characters of something traumatic happening and then the person doesn’t ever speak of it. I might talk about it one day in 10 or 40 years, but until then…it’s done. I actually got this news a couple weeks ago and would have left it at that, but I don’t want any one to ask me questions about it. I don’t know why the judge thought that, I don’t know why the district attorney did what he did, I don’t want to know the extra miles I could take to have justice happen. It wasn’t just. It isn’t fair. I don’t want to…think about it anymore. I did try, way more than I wanted to initially but I couldn’t let nothing happen. Now nothing has happened despite trying and … ugh. Enough.

Morella was very sick yesterday. She came into my room yesterday morning with a litany of symptoms she was feeling. Her stomach hurt but she didn’t have a tummy ache, she was dizzy, her throat hurt and she had crazy cheeks, she wasn’t hungry, at which point I felt her head and then took her temperature. She has a fever of 101. It fluctuated between 101 – 104 all day and into the night. She had chills, she had sweats, she slept a ton, she burned up, she had fever dreams all through the night and it was a hell — for Tim mostly. Bless his heart, he took on Morella duty last night so I could get some sleep and work out that nasty cold. This afternoon I was looking at her throat and noticed that her tongue was all covered in a white goo. Disgusting! I looked it up and told Tim I suspected she might have strep throat or scarlet fever (because she had a rash all over her torso too). I made a doctor appointment and took her in. She was great the office and listened well. They took a swab and the rapid strep test came back negative. I have to wait through tomorrow to see if they call with news regarding the throat culture. They said they wouldn’t call if it was normal. Lame. I want news, the whole “no news is good news” is rubbish. I looked it up online and it said that a in 1/3 of the cases a rapid strep test is a false negative. That is a pretty high percentage, so there is still a chance that she has it.

Her fever was gone for most of the day and crept back up in the afternoon. After that dose of ibuprofen had worn off she was still cool, though she won’t eat or drink anything. Just a little sip here and there. She didn’t even want her dinner Popsicle or eat any strawberry sorbet. My poor little girl. I hope she feels better tomorrow. When she went to bed tonight she wanted me to lay next to her in bed until she fell asleep. She is so terrified of those fever dreams returning.

Neeners meanwhile is rock solid and I hope she continues to be that way.

I have been enjoying the last two days at home. It’s been rainy out, and since Morella is sick we haven’t left the house. Well, I did go to Target and Hyvee for a little shopping during their naps yesterday, and today we went to the doctor but that is about it. Morella has taken a real interest in arts and crafts in the last several months, so I have been doing projects with her to keep her mind off being sick. This morning we made our first pony gala dress! I’ll have to take photos as it goes along as a fashion shoot. Later we worked on Halloween cards and then water painted leaves using stencils. I finished the night off by reading books to them in my bed while they were “tozy” under the covers. I made chili for dinner, which was nice because it is something Morella would never eat. Since I knew she wasn’t going to eat dinner anyway, I might as well indulge. Ahh, chili is so good when it’s NOT burning your mouth spicy (That is what hot sauce is for)

I think Tim went to bed. He took a shower and it’s been awfully quiet down the hall ever since. I wouldn’t blame h…no wait I heard a cough. Anyway, he should be in bed after the night he had.

He is leaving in two weeks for his annual database administrator PASS conference in Seattle. So if anyone wants to visit me then….I’ll be here!

I am excited that Morella is into arts and crafts…I have been looking around my house thinking of all the fun things I have collected over the last three years, just waiting for when I had time to do them. Well, I will have oodles of time if Morella wants to do that sort of stuff! It’s just keeping Neeners engaged for more than 20 minutes.

Also, I have a thing for owls. So if you find pictures of them or whatever, cut it out and send it to me. I have a project in mind….

Sorry friends for slacking. It’s been one of those months where I just don’t want to think about things. On top of that, we went on vacation last week and I vowed all I would do is just passively engage in the internet during my brief breaks in mandatory overtime child rearing. Seriously, there is no actual relaxing on vacation with two kids 3 and under, it is just … “doing lots of different fun stuff”. Morella was so happy with vacation that she didn’t want it to end and just wanted to go to another hotel. She kept asking us what we were going to do next.

I have a lot on my mind and I don’t want to bog you down with all of it. Wait, what is that? You do want to be bogged down? Ha ha, okay.

1. Vacation

Monday we used the whole day to prepare. We bought a personal/car dvd player with a split screen for the girls, packed out bags and cleaned up the living room and kitchen. Gave the neighbor a key to the house and instructions for taking care of the cats and pick up the mail.

Tuesday – Dropped the dog off at the Puppy Hotel, loaded the car and headed out by 10 to go to Manitowoc to catch the S.S. Badger Ferry. We arrived a 1/2 hour early and so we got lunch at A&W’s car hop. The kids enjoyed having a car picnic, and I enjoyed how easy it was to corral them. The boat left by 1:55, and we arrived in Ludington around 7:00. It was a four hour trip and we went back in time one hour. It was a great trip, no one got motion sick, bored or crabby. There was a lot to do and it was incredible to be on the deck of the boat and getting blasted by gusts of wind. It’s so refreshing. We did lose on Neeners little People kitties — one of her long time faves under the Cabana deck. We also indulged in a photo booth session and I accidentally cut off Neeners head in two of the four shots. Nuts! Morella looked so cute too. Heck we all did. One we arrived in Ludington we piled into the car with the hope that the kids would take a nap while we drove to Traverse City.

Alas they did not nap. And my phone with it’s incredibly old calling plan blew up with phone calls. My stupid brother Shane got drunk and got into a car with a drunk friend who ran into a pole. Shane doesn’t like seat belts, so he went flying and was in the BRF hospital with a busted up face. He’s lucky that is all that happened. TWO days before the anniversary of my Dad’s accident. Sheesh. I was/am so angry with him. Anyway, my Mom kept calling me to tell me the bad news (thankfully Lori was able to leave the first message which was brief and to the point) because my Mom loves tragedy. I asked her what I was supposed to do about it since I was in Michigan, and what good would it be to call when all I could do was talk to a nurse.

Anyway. We got to Traverse City, checked in and the girls crashed right away. Tim got us Subway to eat in the dark/bathroom.

Wednesday – Got up, ate breakfast, had a fight and then went to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. It was pretty awesome — we went the visitor center, went on the scenic drive, hiked the Cottonwood Trail, ate lunch in Glen Haven, climbed a dune and got ice cream and coffee. After that we went back to the hotel to “try out the hotel pool” followed by spending time on the beach until it was dark – collecting zebra mussel shells and looking for snail shells. Tim finally admitted that he might not be experiencing allergies — but was in fact sick. Like I had been telling him all along. We all went to bed by 8:00 after I ran across the street to get some dinner from Ruby Tuesday. They messed up our order .. but whatever. I got to have a large beer while I waited for them to prepare it and talked with some fellow patrons who told me about the Butterfly House on Mackinaw Island. As I said, we all went to bed at 8:00 because when you have one hotel room with two little kids, that is the only way to ensure they go to sleep. I later got up around 1 to surf the internet for an hour.

Thursday – Got up early, ate breakfast and then I had Tim take the girls the beach (we had private beach access at the Sugar Beach Resort) while I took a shower and packed our bags up. Tim was pretty miserable with his cold, so I had the kids for the rest of the day while he tried to sleep as much as possible. We we left I stopped at an apple place with a playground, sheep/goats/chickens access, cafe, store, rope maze, etc. We spent a couple hours there before driving off to Mackinaw City. I find it a little ironic that I spent the day at an Apple Orchard on the anniversary of my Dad’s death. That is what I did after I found out he passed last year. I called Tim and asked him to come home, and took the kids to the apple orchard like I had planned. I needed to do something … normal then…to wait until we found out what needed to do. I had thought I would never do that again on that day…but maybe it isn’t such a bad thing.

We got to the hotel which was Bridge Vista and it had a water park! Our little fish was in heaven. We got dressed and “checked it out” for awhile before getting dressed and eating a subpar dinner at an Irish Pub. Then while Tim retired early I took the girls to check out the private beach on Lake Huron. It was quite different than Lake Michigan, not many shells – but you could also tell that Lake Huron still had living plants in it. Wait, maybe this was the night we went to bed early. Yeah Tim was reallys ick so this was the day. But we did go to bed early the night before too.

Friday – Up and at em – and off to catch the Shepler’s Ferry to take us to Mackinaw Island. While we were getting coffee and drinks for the girls I got a $5.00 bill that had “Vote Pro-Life” written all over it in large letters as well as “God Bless America”. I handed it back to the cashier and asked for a different $5 dollar bill. She obliged me. I went out and stood in line with Tim while waited for the ferry. There was a man in a business suit ahead of me looking at an Ipad, and had a bunch of yard signs covered in a black bag. Tim took the girls for a walk and I asked him if he has an Ipad (because it has some sort of weird covering). He said it was and that the covering was magnetic. We spoke a bit more on the awesomeness of an Ipad (as long as it doesn’t break and you live next to an Apple Store) before he started talking political things with me. “Darn so and so dropped out of the presidential race” — which he repeated three more times to my stony silence before I hollered out to Tim “TAKE MORELLA TO THE POTTY!” at which point, he got the hint and dropped it. Tim came back to me and whispered in my ear to take a look at the schedule. I walked over and saw “Young Republicans Leadership Conference”. Well that explained a lot!

Anyway. So Tim’s favorite part of this story, was that the dude I was talking too was some kind of small potatoes celebrity. Lots of people were saying “hi Chuck!” and some reporter even interviewed him and took his picture. I had assumed, because of the signs and suit, that he was a real estate agent. So in a stretch of silence, I asked him if he was a real estate agent. He was embarrassed and said “No they are political signs” and then made sure to tell the next person he spoke with in extensive detail about what kind of political signs they were.

Mackinaw Island was cool. We played at the park, took a carriage ride and had the best meal of the trip at Horn’s. We got some souvenirs at 50% off and visited two Butterfly houses. Morella could spend all day in those darn houses. We took the 6:00 ferry, went back to the hotel and spent another hour at the water park. I am thinking Morella would like a trip to Wisconsin Dells for her birthday to spend at the water park in November.

Saturday – ate breakfast and headed out. It was a long drive through the Upper Penninsula, we missed the Mystery Spot because Neeners had just fallen asleep and it’s a general rule of thumb, that if a kid is sleeping we keep it that way as long as possible. There was a teeny bit of drama when our gas light went on and we weren’t sure if we’d make it to the next gas station – but we did. We ate lunch at the the Swedish Pantry in Escanaba and then went to our hotel in Green Bay. We checked out the pool, searched for a grocery store to buy milk and then went to bed. I was sick by then and Tim was feeling better. I was going to meet up with my friend Jen but she was sick too we were two ships in the night. Boo.

Sunday – got up, ate breakfast and then went to Bay Beach for a few rides before it started to really rain. We left after that and drove through solid rain, stopping once to eat some burritos at Chipolte before making it home by 4:00. I was miserable the whole ride home and last night, though I did manage to play some new Gears of War III with Tim before crashing at 10:00.

There we go. That was vacation. This morning Morella came into the room complaining of various ailments: her tummy hurt but wasn’t a headache, she was dizzy, her throat hurt and cheeks felt crazy, and she felt strange. I felt her head and it felt hot (Tim couldn’t detect it – hurray for mother’s magic fingers) and took her temperature. She had a temp of 101, and a glance at her throat confirmed a sore throat. No ballet for her, but we were okay with that because we are all sick and feeling poorly (except Neeners, but she has been nursing like a fiend so maybe she has a natural vaccine in her favor). Today is a TV holiday.

What else. There is water in our basement. Lawyer business I don’t want to deal with, and I am still sick. I busted out the crock pot to make chicken and dumpling stew for dinner so that is nice. I made Morella some sick girl tea (throat coat with generous amounts of honey). My brother Josh got out of the hospital the day Shane went in, but he is out now. Mom called to say that she is going to live with Shane for a month to help out. This outta be good, she can barely walk 6 or 8 steps … what is she going to help with? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

You know, it was actually a pretty good weekend. Full of relaxing and stuff like that. Tim had planned a big bike trip with some buddies to New Glarus to visit the brewery and have a few beers and then hit up a local restaurant for lunch in which the wives and kids would meet them. We did just that, and we packed a corner of the Something or other Stube, complete with six kids. Afterward we waited a small eternity to get some fudge from a dour old lady a couple buildings down and some blue moon ice cream for Noah, Morella and Neeners (Hilary and her kids had already left). I don’t get the Blue Moon obsession, I mean it isn’t that good, but I hear that kids just love it. If it weren’t for my own kids proving me wrong, I never would have believed it true.

Sorry, this post is kind of sucking. There is a big fat fly buzzing around and none of the stupid animals we border are taking care of it. I am going to probably have to do something about it in a minute here. Tim just said he was going to bed. He is still exhausted and in pain from his 75 mile bike ride. If he had taken this bike ride in the beginning of summer before he starting working from home, I bet it would have been cake. Not so much now that he doesn’t really leave the house most days of the week. Poor guy. Then today he had old man book club with some other friends while I had deal with the same crabby kids again.

Oh after the fudge we spent a couple hours at a park, and then on the way home stopped at a marshy boardwalk to look at scenic wildlife. It was nice — two of the three kids enjoyed it. But you know, that is usually the case. I have to accept that there is nothing wrong with Neeners other than she is two. Man, when Morella was two there were a few rough spots but nothing like the average day with Neeners. She has taken to just putting her head down on the floor and sobbing whenever something doesn’t go her way. I can’t tell you how many times she declares that someone has been mean to her and then after it is all said and done she will say “I stop tying…” (crying), which breaks my heart only a little.

Anyway, so today we spent time outside in the backyard, then got dressed and hit a few garage sales before going to get some tacos and then take the dog to the dog park for the first time. It was great to be back at the dog park, although it wasn’t so great when the dog stop listening to us and ran off and I had to carry 50+ pounds of kids because they decided they couldn’t walk anymore. At least the Ergo helped out with that — I carried Morella on my back and held Neeners. For dinner they had cheese balls and dried cereal. It would have been pointless to offer them more because they had such a late lunch (3:30). Thankfully, it is a well known fact that kids can survive on air.

Saturday night I went out with my friend Ann to see Contagion. I was ridiculously excited to see this movie and was very disappointed when it didn’t live up to its hype. However, after the kids were put to bed I went grocery shopping this evening and stocked up a bit more on my pantry. I am just appalled that the average american family has less than a weeks worth of food to live on, should something disastrous happen. Maybe it is because I grew up poor – but I always strive to have a least a month’s worth of food in my pantry. Shopping at Woodman’s on a Sunday night also lends itself to the depleted grocery store feel — they were out of bananas, among other things.

Sigh. Anyway. I have been thinking lately “Starting tomorrow I will get back on my feet and be awesome again like I used to.” You know, be on top of the house, cook healthy nutritious and interesting meals, interact and educate the kids, pursue my own interests…but then it occurred to me that I have this same thought a lot, and that is always next week or whatever. There was a month or two after Morella was six months old that I was there, but that might have been it. Oh sure there is the good day or two, and those are probably what lead me to think I was ever a super mom. No, no, I know. I am a super duper Mom – even though I lost my temper with the girls on Thursday and threw a stuffy or two hard against the wall. It was enough that the girls reminisced the moment for an hour after they were really supposed to be in bed and sleeping (which was how the incident had happened). Why is it that bedtime is one of the most difficult times of the day? I guess it is because we are all tired.

Oh hey speaking of which I should go to bed. Morella has her first ballet class tomorrow at 9:00 and I have absolutely no idea where her unitard tutu. At least I know where her shoes are though.

Also I got an email from the lame cottage people saying that it would be delivered this week. They even gave me the shipping company information and a tracking number, which I will call tomorrow to see if it is even valid. I am still not holding my breath on this though.

Lastly, one of my younger brothers – Josh – is in ICU at Luther Hospital in Eau Claire in a medicated coma. He has been there since last Wednesday because of a bad asthma/bronchitis attack. The coma is so that he doesn’t fight the breathing machine and he currently cannot breath without it. This is the exact same thing that happened last year except he hasn’t been flown to Rochester for the miracle blood transfusion machine. Mom said they are going to keep him that way for a few more days, so good thoughts for him would be appreciated. Mom also has a bad case of bronchitis, but said she is getting better. Or least that is what I can figure when she talks between gasps.

I know that last part sounds so … callous. But I think it is just that my head is so weary of all the “wolf” cries that I have entered a wait and see mode.

Hi folks!

The office smells strongly of cat pee, so if I peter out (heh) you will have to forgive me because I probably passed out, or did something about it and then subsequently got distracted. Why the long time in between posts?

–Cottage. The assholes over at Bargain Market, which is the seller through Amazon, that I ordered the cottage, are fucking things up royally. Yes, I know, I try to refrain from swearing in general, but in this case, this is gentle. Essentially what happened is this. I ordered a cottage and provided a phone number on the order form. A couple of days later I got an email from Bargain Market saying it was shipped via freight and the only way it would be delivered is if they call me for delivery appointment confirmation. Great, except they had the wrong phone, our old land line. I had to dig pretty deep to see where they got it (stuck to my amazon card from two years ago). I emailed them right away, but the girls were in bugging me and I typo-ed part of the phone number. No matter, I emailed them three more times immediately with the correct number. The email from Bargain Market did not include any contact information for them, the name of the freight company, my tracking number — nothing. The next day, we find out that almost all of the negative reviews from them are because they do not answer emails and there is no way to contact them. I had thought 90% approval rating was good, but apparently that is not. Tim informed me the next day to never go below 97%. Great honey, you could have mentioned that in the three weeks we were mulling this over.

So Tim contacted Amazon for me, and they can do nothing except refund the money for the product — but not the $220 SH. I called Fedex, USPS, and UPS on a lark hoping that they had a delivery in Madison just waiting to be delivered — since the shipment is supposedly from Iowa it should have been in Madison by Friday (according to Fedex). Finally I left negative feedback because that seems to be the only way they ever respond — and got a response! Except…after confirming they had the right phone number, the followed it up with the one typo email and got it wrong. I emailed them back immediately on Friday, and guess what? Nothing. No response. Finally after 5 today I emailed them again. OH and when they did respond to me assuring me that they were doing their best to correct the phone number, they did not give me the name of the shipping company or a tracking number. So essentially I am in the same boat and beyond angry about it.

I got so stressed out about this last week that I got a bad kink in my neck that is persisting to this day. Meanwhile the girls are anxiously awaiting their dream cottage and doing every good deed under the sun to get it. It’s been a great motivator, but what if they never get it? Oh okay, fine. They will get it but I will be out $220 bucks, that is unless it actually comes through. (Not holding my breath).

–Dentist appointment. I got a crown.
–Did I mention that bad kink in the neck? Well it sucked and hurt a lot.
–DeJope Bingo with Sigrid and Matt — I lost $5.00 — one of which was spent on a cookie. I had fun though and drank a ton of free beverages.
–Labor Day Weekend — visit to my brother Shane’s on Friday night after spending all day cleaning the living room and organizing toys, putting stuff away, packing and dealing with three cranky kids for the whole morning.
–Saturday in Dells Dam it rained so we played outside when we could and stayed inside when we couldn’t. Neeners watched Rio and loved it after Morella crashed out early.
–Sunday, morning play in the yard along with another camp fire, then afternoon at the Pow-wow until we were rained out. I bought the girls a hair fluff (mine plus one neighbor girl) and it was just priceless to see them put it in their hair with such importance and then strut afterward talking about “those indian people.” Morella said that one day she was going to be indian. I told her if she kept trying really hard, one day she might get there.
–Saturday night I forgot to mention I had a late night with a few beers (okay, one too many that caused a Sunday hangover headache) with Lori and Shannon and had a blast. I finally went to bed at 1:30 — I haven’t done something like that in … a very very long time. So long in fact, that I can’t really remember the last time. I had so much fun.
–Back to Sunday, we stayed all day and then left at bedtime to come home, the girls passed out right away and made a clean transition to bed.
–Monday Labor Day I got up, showered and then put together party favors before hitting Woodman’s for beverages for niece Moslee’s princess birthday party in Milwaukee.

On the way Morella had to desperately pee in a dead zone. We pulled off at the first exit to Deerfield with the promise of a BP gas station, except it was about 7 miles away. Morella was desperate and bawling in pain so we pulled over to a semi secluded place. I took her out and just as she was about to pee a woman across the road, with her dog in tow started hollering at us telling us that we were doing the most disgusting thing in the world, blah blah blah. I pulled up Morella’s pants and asked her if this 3 year old could use her bathroom if she objected that much. She said no, that there was a BP “just up the road” and then went on about how terrible we were as human beings. I had enough of her bull and flipped her off (Morella didn’t see). She hollered back “Up yours!” to which I replied “Nice language to use in front of a 3 year old.” We went back to the interstate and pulled over and she peed on the side of road, risking all of our lives. She would not go in the diaper I put on her.

I don’t know. If I were in Chicago traffic, she would have had to just pee in the diaper and deal. But we were out in the middle of woods in a remote area, a place where civilization deems 6 miles to be “just up the road” with one occupant who believes that her dog’s piss in her own yard is less toxic or disgusting than that of a desperate 3 year old in the ditch, across the road.

I hope that woman pisses herself one day because no one helped her out.

–Lastly, I just haven’t been feeling great because of my period which I totally didn’t expect and happened on the ride home from my brother’s. At least it explained why I was so darn irritable and got a blinding head later that night. So I have been rather low in energy this week.

I am glad that we had today to be home though and try to get back to normal. Of course I wish I wasn’t so low energy right now.