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Thursday, September 20, 2012

Lake McConaughy ... Part Two ... My National Lampoon Vacation Continues ...

If you didn't read part one, you might want to catch up, but it's probably not necessary ... just know our first day was filled with missing, skinny dipping teenagers, broken, rented jet-skis, tornado warnings, evacuations, forest fires and setting up camp after the wind blew most of it down ...

So ... day two ... we're ready to put the "fixed" jet-ski back in the water ... and it does the same thing as before ... starts for thirty seconds and then won't start ... I think at this point if the lemon man was the crying sort, he would have been balling ... so, we get back on the phone with the rental people ... and this time he goes alone back to Ogallala to get the jet-ski looked at again ... and hopefully really fixed ...

I head back to camp where I'm left to deal with all six kids and try to entertain the other people there as well ... it wasn't really a chore to entertain people ... it was just hard ... and not at all the way it was supposed to go ...

The lemon man was gone for about six hours only to come back and tell us that the jet-ski wasn't fixable ... the cooling system was dead and the parts were going to take days to get there ... and we only had two days left of our vacation ...

That night was better ... filled with conversation and friends ... the two teenage girls were

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Lake McConaughy ... The Most Wonderful, Stressful, Amazing, Horrible Vacation ... Part 1 ...

Headed off to Paradise
I don't even know where to begin ... this post is going to be long I'm afraid ... so I'll apologize up front about that ...

We embarked on a journey that was supposed to be amazing fun and relaxation a few weeks ago ... and there was some fun and relaxation ... but it was like a National Lampoon vacation ... I even asked the lemon man what karma train we pissed off ...

We were planning on leaving Thursday morning, but the lemon man wanted to leave Wednesday night ... we were thinking maybe we would stay in a hotel when we got to Ogallala, Nebraska, but that didn't work out ... when we got there the hotels were all full ... we had spent the entire day Wednesday shopping, packing the car and going to pick up the jet-ski we had rented for our trip at the lake ... we underestimated how long it would take to get there ... so as we pulled into our campsite after 11pm ... we set up camp in the dark ...

We had the two of us, my three kids, my oldest daughter's best friend, the lemon man's younger sister, who is fourteen and her best friend who was fifteen ... we were outnumbered by kids ... but I will tell you the younger they were ... the better behaved they were ... I might actually have to save some of my stories about the two teenagers for a future blog ... but needless to say ... I will not be taking them on vacation with me any time in the near future ... maybe when the

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Sabotage ...

The title alone means I know what I'm doing to myself ... I mean, really, I know that I am sabotaging myself ... yet I still do it ... what is it about us? ... humans? ... women? ... all of us that struggle with weight and body image ... what is it about us that makes us fail ... that makes us sabotage ourselves? ... is it psychological? physiological? societal? peer pressure? ... sigh ...

Here is my story ... my crazy story that makes me feel like a failure, but maybe typing it will make me feel like I'm ready to get back on the horse ... I guess we'll see ...

So back in January I started on Weight Watchers ... it was good ... it's worked before for me ... I was good with it ... by March I had lost 32 pounds ... then I plateaued ... and I don't know what it is with me and being majorly discouraged by plateaus ... but I was ... I fell off the diet ... I gained about ten pounds ... then I got really serious and started on the paleo diet ... which was easier than I thought it would be to follow ... my main problem was getting the fresh produce on a daily or every other day basis and the lack of true

Monday, September 17, 2012

Touch ...

Have you ever taken one of those love language tests?... you know ... they ask you a bunch of questions and figure out what love language you are ... well, I have ... and I am mostly physical touch ... I have a lot of words of affirmation ... and then the rest just kind of flitter off into nothing ...

When I was getting ready to leave the hospital after my second child was born, my midwife came to me and said that I needed to be prepared for something ... she told me that never before and never again in my life would I be touched as much as I was about to be ... she warned me that my older child would want to touch me, my husband would want to touch me and of course the baby would need me to touch her ...

She apparently had never taken seven, nine and eleven year-olds on vacation ...

I love to cuddle with my kids ... I love to hold them ... and my goodness gracious was that trip to California (Disneyland, Sea World, Legoland) amazing ... but I have never, ever been

Friday, September 14, 2012

The Karma Train at a Softball Game ...

The amount of emotion I feel over this subject ... and the glee I am taking in other people's misery ... makes me feel like an extremely bad person ... I'm just putting that out there ... because it really does kind of bug me ... but then again ... it kind of doesn't ... because the karma train really did drive straight through the middle of my daughter's softball game ...

Some of you may remember me writing about major softball drama that happened with my daughter's softball team this summer ... she had three coaches ... two of them were so concerned about playing favoritism to their own daughters and just being the kinds of coaches you hate to see coaching your children that it made her miserable ... and this is a game she loves ...

We (meaning the lemon man, my daughter and I) decided early in the season that no matter what she wouldn't play for those coaches, on that team again ... she had played competitive softball before ... before I had to move in with my mom ... she knew, I knew, we all knew she was capable ... so we got her all set up for about twelve tryouts ... and then she went to California ... was rough housing with her cousin and broke her hand ... she was in a cast for four weeks ... so to those of you looking for a follow-up to the last

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Rollercoasters of Life ... Yes, I'm Back ...

I think I decided that blogging is something I do for a few reasons ...

One ... I have emotions that cannot safely be expressed in any other manner ...

Two ... I feel heavily inspired to write ... whether by a subject or just in general ...

Three ... Because I am procrastinating ...

Four ... To clear my head to allow new thoughts in ...

For the past few months the only one of these I've really had is number two ... but now three and four have entered the picture ... with a hint of one ...

I took the summer off from school ... which was an amazing, much needed break ... but I had nothing to procrastinate for ... I had nothing new to learn ... no papers to write ... no reason to clean out the gears spinning constantly in my head ...

I had an amazing summer ... and those of you that know my history ... I have been so, so, so poor ... my kids' school district considers me homeless ... but this summer, thanks to other people ... and their generosity ... my kids went on two vacations with me ... I spent