He Likes It...Hey Mikey!

Does anyone remember Mikey?

Well, I'm not actually talking about cereal but that was a cool commercial.  

I am talking about Middle School!  

The 6th grade to be exact.  

We got out of the house on time this morning and I was all set to walk Michael onto campus and to his first class.  

As it turns out my soon to be 12-year-old looked at me and said...

 "Nope, not gonna happen, Mom."

He wanted us to drop him off in the parking lot and 

he stated that he would be taking things from there.

All I can remember stammering was, "but...but...but" as I stared out the windshield at what appeared to be giants trying to

 masquerade around as 7th and 8th graders.

How would he find his classroom?  His friends?  

I mean we did do the walk around after we picked up

 his schedule the day before but would that be enough?  

Turns out it was enough.

He loved his first day of middle school.  

He likes all his teachers and he didn't have any

 trouble finding his way around.

Phew!  

Just Rambling...

Made French Toast for dinner tonight.  It was the meal that Michael asked for and I decided what the heck?  Who says breakfast is only for breakfast?  Tomorrow is the first day of the new school year and Michael will be in middle school.  If French Toast for dinner makes my little guy happy than that is good enough for me.

Have been figuring out some things...slowly but surely.  Why is it that what we know feels safer to us even when what we know is not what we want?  If it were just me, I would be gone.  But it isn't just me.  The choices I make affect a lot of others.  I feel sometimes like I am being torn apart.  And yet, I stay quiet.  It doesn't change anything when I say how I feel anyway.  I watch each day come and go without feeling.  I don't want the rest of my life to pass this way.  He doesn't believe that I will ever really go--so he feels safe not making any changes.  I have asked and asked.  If it is not something he wants then it doesn't happen.  How can he not see what is happening to me??  How can he not care?

He is a good father.  He has a good heart.  Those are the things that stop me.  I know of so many others who are not.  I have personal experience with this.  

How can there be a marriage, though, where only one person calls the shots?  Where promises are made and then broken?  When I feel empty inside?  How?

Weeks ago when our son ended up in a hospital two hours from where we live and we didn't know what was going on (thankfully, we came out good on the other side) but he left me there to handle it all--the doctors, the tests, the absolute panic--alone.  He said he needed to get back to work.  I also know that he hates hospitals and I KNOW that this was part of it.  I felt so alone.  So terrified.  If it had not been for my mother-in-law who lived close by I think I would have had a nervous breakdown.  I don't know how to get over this, though.  A part of me felt that if I could not even depend on him to help me during a time like that, then why am I even with him?  

God, I am so sad lately...and I am so damn tired of being sad.

Soup and Stuff

Italian Sausage Soup

I made this delicious soup today--I know!  It's not exactly the soup-making time of the year but for some reason it was just calling to me.  I am really glad I did!  So good!

I made a few changes to the recipe:

• Used way more garlic than called for--we love garlic round these parts!
• Used 2 cans of chicken broth and 2 cans of beef broth (made my own using Herb-OX granules and cubes--way less sodium.
• Used 2 cans of stewed tomatoes
• Used frozen spinach instead of fresh
• Used 1 chopped onion
• Did not add any other salt
• Added a few shakes of red pepper flakes

Love, love, love this soup!! And will definitely be making it in the future.

I made a trip to Kohl's today and used a birthday gift card from my dear friends, G&C--they were so kind to throw me a surprise 42nd birthday party at their house a couple of weeks ago--and I was able to get the 7 qt. enamel coated cast-iron Dutch Oven pictured above.  I have wanted one for so long but just could never justify the expense.  So thankful for the generosity of my wonderful friends.

I think we've got everything ready for Michael to go back to school.  He is not a huge fan of school.  It makes me so sad because he really loved his first school and teachers (K, 1st, & 2nd).  In the town we live in 3rd, 4th & 5th grades are separated into another school on the other side of town and neither one of us were particularly impressed with this second school.  In 3rd grade he was dealt a female teacher that didn't seem to like boys very much. She definitely showed a partiality to the girls in her class.  Nothing you could put your finger on and say "A ha!" And around the parents she was always sticky sweet but my son sure felt it.

Fourth grade was better.  His teacher was just the right amount of firm and fun and he had a pretty good year.  Fifth grade not so much.  I remember one assignment was a book report where he had to give a little speech and make a puppet to use while he was talking.  He made a puppet of Martin Luther King, Jr. out of felt and used a stick for a handle.  Yes, it looked like it was made by a fifth grader--maybe it wasn't his teacher's idea of "art" but I was ready to tear her a new one when he asked if she was going to put it up on the board (like she had with a lot of the other puppets) and she told him that it wasn't really creative enough to go on the board.  I was never so happy to say good-the-hell-by to a school before.

This year he is going back to the other side of town to middle school for 6th, 7th & 8th grades.  There are going to be some big changes but I hope they will be good changes.  I am going to think positive.

I have to say I am having such fun going around to all the different blogs out there.  Oh my goodness!  It is so amazing to be able to see glimpses of different places.  But, I am a little afraid that I may be developing a bit of an addiction.  Anybody else having any trouble with this?  I bet I'm not the only one ;-)

And so it Begins...

I have never been very good at keeping journals.  I am hoping I can change that.  The few times that I have bothered to jot down a few lines here and there have always proven to be pretty enlightening later on down the line when I happened to discover them.  It can be startling how quickly your frame of mind can change.  How darn fickle we can sometimes be.  Something that seems to so important right now may not even make us bat an eyelash tomorrow.  

So this is going to be where I will come to jot down my thoughts, my ideas, my fears and insecurities (there might be a lot of those--I sometimes have an abundance of those.  Maybe by doing this I may even be able to shed some of 'em.  I can always hope.), and also those things I am thankful for.

This is the first day of the rest of my life...quirky? Yep.  But also kind of cool, too.

And here we go...

Today is Sunday, August 19, 2012.  We've had a pretty full weekend and I'm feeling it.

We went over to my husband's cousins and his wife's house on Friday night for pizza and mojitos.  I love those people dearly.  The kind of people who really would give you the shirt off their backs.  Probably had a few too many mojitos because when I woke up on Saturday I had a bit of a headache but we still managed to head out for a day of river tubing later on.  

Michael got invited to go with his good friend's family hiking up at the Pinnacles for the day (glad he got to have some fun this last weekend of summer--he starts the 6th grade on Wednesday--where did the summer go to?) so it was just John & June (my husband's cousin and his wife) and my husband (Disco Guy) and I.  I think it was the smallest group we have ever gone with to the river but it was really awesome.  No kids, just the adults tubing down the river.  It was really a great day.  It was just hot enough outside and the water was just chilly enough to be refreshing. 

Afterwards we came back to G&C's house for homemade grilled cheese stuffed burgers (and yes, a few mojitos, too, but we kept it in moderation).

I paid for the tubing later last night when my fibro started acting up.  The tendons in my shoulders and arms were on fire.  I went to bed as soon as we got home.  This morning we were all tired but at least my arms and shoulders were back to normal.

Today Disco Guy and I made our weekly trip to Food for More for groceries.  I have been craving homemade soup lately (go figure with the temps being in the triple digits) so I picked up some ingredients for a sausage veggie soup recipe I found online that looks good.  I was going to make it this afternoon but I am wiped out.  Sitting down with a good book or a nice movie is sounding a whole lot better anyway.  

Right now I can hear Disco Guy and Michael and his buddy out in the pool playing.  It's a nice sound to have in the background.  

I am reading Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer about the story of Chris McCandless.  It is a pretty interesting read but sad, too.  I actually envy a lot this young man's (he died very young but if he had lived he would actually be 2 years older than me--44) ideals.  He really experienced life.  I know a lot of people were really angry with him for throwing his life away and for causing his parents so much pain and I do know that there were some things he seemed pretty messed up about, but at least he lived his ideals.  There aren't a lot of us that can say that.  So many of us get into life situations--jobs, relationships, etc.--that are not really what we want but we stick with it because we are told by society that this is what we are supposed to do.  We are supposed to get an education, get a job, get a house, live a respectable life.  Don't cause any disturbances.  I have probably passed the mid-point of my life by--I turned 42 years old just a week ago--and I see things a lot differently now than I used to.

Many, many years ago my high school sweetheart told me that he just wanted to be a surfer and live on the beach in a hut somewhere.  And at the time I remember feeling completely aghast.  I mean, he had been my boyfriend for the last 3 years and I was just certain that we were going to get married some day (um, ya sure) and how could I possibly marry him if he didn't go out and get a good job so we could get a big house and nice cars and raise a family.  I didn't know much but I did know that that stuff cost a lot of money. Long story, short, things didn't quite work out like I thought they would.

Now, that I sit here, knowing what I know now...ya, that hut on the beach doesn't look too bad.  Life is funny like that.

That book or movie is calling to me so I think I will wrap today's entry up.

So, how to end things?  I mean, I am writing this little bloggy thing mostly for myself but I do know that maybe one day, other's eyes might just land here for a bit.  So...maybe like this...

Wishing us well...until next time.