crap weekend

It's been forever since I haven't had a good weekend. I guess I was due for one. Not that it has been so terrible, but nothing really great has happened either.

Brian wasn't feeling well when he came home from work on Friday. I have no idea what was wrong with him. Bad stomach pains without nausea or any other symptoms? No clue. He spent the rest of the night and half of Saturday in bed. Nothing we did made him feel any better, which completely sucked. We were supposed to go out Saturday night but he still wasn't feeling well so we didn't make it. It was disappointing because he was supposed to play a few songs with the band. I do love seeing him onstage, probably as much as he loves being there.

The girls and I went to Borders Friday night for coffee and book shopping. I bought some Mother's Day presents and Hannah found the gift that she wants to get me. Coincidentally, she wants it too. Casey spent the rest of her birthday money on two books, which she has already finished reading.

Saturday was spent taking care of Brian and running a few errands. I was planning on coming to work for a few hours but didn't make it due to lack of sleep Friday night. Plus I didn't want to leave Brian with the girls while he wasn't feeling well. Not that they can't take care of themselves, but I didn't want him to have to worry about anything.

So I stayed home yesterday, which means I'm at work today instead. At least it's quiet! And Brian is finally feeling better, so that makes me happy too. I'm getting a lot done, in spite of spending time on Blogger :)

I know

I'm getting really bad about updating my blog. I'm not really sure why. There's a lot going on at home right now, some bad and some good. Mostly good, of course, so that might be the problem :) I blah more when I'm upset, in real life and here. But that's no excuse. Then again, who really cares whether I post or not? A handful of people at most.

No big catastrophes, no secrets left to spill really. I guess there are a couple, but nothing earth shattering or life changing. Just everyday life, which in my case, tends to be pretty boring. We work, we eat, we sleep. We spend time with the girls, with our friends, with each other. We laugh, we worry, we love. It's incredible and ordinary at the same time. And I wouldn't want it any other way.

So Brian got his car on Thursday. It's the Maxima that he found online:



This is a picture of the actual car, stolen from the dealer's website. It is so nice and has tons of cool extras. I have driven it a total of one time since we got it. I don't expect to get behind the wheel much more than that :)

We had a great time at the zoo on Saturday! I'll post about it later and add some pics. I hope Blogger is nice to this post. I hear it's being an ass.

my keys

I just recently realized how much the stuff hanging from my keyring says about me. Yep, that's about it.

new car

Apparently, we're looking for a new car. Brian really does need one. The Punisher is getting old and little things are wrong with it. Plus he deserves to have a nice car, he works so hard for us. He did some shopping online the other day and last night we actually visited a couple of dealers. We test-drove this car:



It was nice and in our price range, but a convertible isn't very practical. Casey didn't like driving with the top down. When we got back to the dealership, she said that her neck was sore from having to duck down to avoid the wind. We weren't really serious about buying it, but Brian said that the weather was perfect for a spin in a convertible so we took it for a little drive. It was fun! But I doubt that we would have enough nice days to justify buying it. Stupid Ohio weather.

I think he's looking for a car similar to mine (Nissan Maxima). That would be cool...his and hers Nissans :)

hula hoops

our weekend was lovely. Casey had a great birthday, part one. Dinner at Joe's Crab Shack was delicious and fun. She ate a ton of crab legs :) She loves the cell phone and our waitress made her spin a hula hoop in the middle of the dining area while they sang Happy Birthday. My brother-in-law was a party pooper and just held his. I have a great picture of the two of them laughing at Casey's attempt. I'll try to post it later. This weekend we're going to the zoo with family and some of her friends for part two. I hope the weather is nice! And then she's planning on having a sleep-over.

Sunday was a good day too. We're not at all religious so Easter just means candy for breakfast and ham for dinner. We did a little housework and a little yardwork, took the dog for a walk and relaxed all day. We watched Elizabethtown (we're loving Netflix!), which was really good.

Tomorrow I'm taking my parents to an appointment with the Social Security office nearby to see if my mother qualifies for disability benefits since her doctors think she is not able to work. That will be lots of fun. But they can't take themselves and I volunteered. I hope it doesn't take too long. At least I'll have the morning to myself after I take the girls to school. And maybe, hopefully, there will be a couple of cold beers in the fridge when I get home. Trust me, I'll need them :)

food poisoning?

How do you even know if you had food poisoning? I have no idea. I do know that Brian and I were both sick today and last night. We had almost the same dinner as the girls but with different cheese. Neither of them were sick, so at least there's that. We stayed in bed until 11:00, then spent the rest of the day on the couch.

The girls came home and gave us some sympathy. I always love that. We're feeling much better, but not all the way. After dinner, the girls and I went outside to take pictures of the beautiful tree in our backyard:





Well, Hannah and I took pictures. Casey played with the neighbor's dog, Cinnamon:



We brought in a branch to take some closeups. Hannah's:



turned out a lot better than mine:



But they're both nice. Hey, if you want to make me feel even better, click on the thumbnail under my profile and go visit Mulligan :)

so pretty

I have a new renter this week. And look how well her thumbnail matches the new colors of my blog! Coincidence, I swear.

Anyway, I really like her blog. She's a teacher (very admirable) and she's political, but doesn't beat you over the head with it. She has some great pictures in her photo gallery and a bunch of great links. Check her out by clicking on the thumbnail under my profile.

In other news, it's Casey's birthday this weekend. She will be 13. bleh. We're getting her a cell phone and she chose Joe's Crab Shack for her birthday dinner. It's also my brother-in-law's birthday on Sunday (he'll be 39!) so she invited their family to come out to dinner with us. It will be nice, I know we'll all have a great time. I'm not excited about my youngest turning 13, but what can you do?

Writing Collaboration: Episode Two

So, did I already mention that I joined the Crazy/Hip Blog Mamas webring? Even though I don't consider myself hip, at all. Apparently it's an and/or thing, because they let me in, despite my lame assedness.

Anyway, I love them. The other members are so cool and funny and have great sites. There's this thing on the website called the Writing Collaboration that I'm going to try. Because sometimes I really need the motivation to write something besides the bullshit I usually post. So the topic is:

If I had an entire weekend to myself I would...

My initial reaction to this topic is that I would most likely have a breakdown (See? Crazy, that's how I got in :) but I realized that probably isn't true anymore. There have been many times in my life when the thought of being left alone for 48 hours would have sent me over the edge. There were times when a weekend alone sounded like heaven. These days, it's neither torture nor a fantasy. And while it's not something I would ever seek out, I wouldn't curl up and die if it happened. I can imagine what it would be like though, and I'm sure it would be lovely.

The first thing I would do is check into a hotel, one with a jacuzzi in the room. We stayed in a room like that on our wedding night and it was so nice. Anything that reminds me of my wedding or my wonderful husband is always a plus. I know I would have to bring pictures of the kids and hubby to put in the room, because I'm just that lame. I can't stand to be away from my family for more than a day. It's pathetic, I know. Anyway, these are the things I would do with my weekend:

1. Sleep in as late as possible.
2. Spend a few hours with a cup of coffee and my writing journal.
3. Take a million pictures.
4. Soak in the jacuzzi.
5. Catch up on my reading.
6. Call home too much.
7. NOT shop.

Of course, I don't need a weekend alone to do any of those things. But for some reason, I never do them. Too many errands on the weekends, I guess. And it's so easy to put off doing things for myself if it means doing something for Brian or the kids. I call it the price of motherhood. And they're completely worth it.

Go Bucks!

I keep getting hits from people looking for pictures of AJ Hawk and Bobby Carpenter so I figured I'd post the ones I have. They're not great, but maybe someone will appreciate them. Or not.

update

• The boy had his court date yesterday. Fines and community service and a year of probation. Not too bad. None of that really affects us, since he is over 18. At most, I'll have to nag him to get the shit done, but maybe not. He is remarkably capable of handling his responsibilities if it means not having to listen to me bitch about something. Hey, whatever works.
• Hannah won't have a court date for a couple of weeks, since she is a minor. Apparently, that makes it takes longer. Right now, she is sick with a terrible cold. I feel bad for her. She spent almost the whole night last night sitting beside me on the couch. That's not like her.
• Good news (to me anyway): My sister had the same court date as the boy. He told me that she and her husband got two days in jail, fines and court costs and three years of probation. I'm enjoying all of that way too much. I was hoping for more jail time, but I'm satisfied with what they got. Yes, I'm still mad. As if you couldn't tell.

I had a terrible weekend, thanks for asking. Really, the worst one in forever. First of all, Casey was gone from Thursday morning until Sunday night, which sucked because I really missed her. Whenever one of the kids is gone, I'm always on edge. And probably on the verge of a breakdown. So yeah, I was already jittery and scattered and off balance.

Brian and I had a fight on Friday, over nothing really. I blame myself, I overreacted and took another step closer to that breakdown. It was terrible. I hate it when we fight. Luckily we don't do it very often, this may have been our third or fourth fight ever.

We worked it out, of course, and everything was fine again. We ordered a pizza and watched some tv before going to bed. The fight alone would have been enough to ruin my weekend, but then, something even worse happened.

I wish I knew how to put a long post behind a link that you would have to click to read it. Because I would definitely put one here. Since I don't know how to do that with blogger, I'm filling the space with this nonsense to heighten the tension :) it's working, right?

Anyway, at about 2:30am, the phone rang. I checked the Caller ID screen and it was my youngest sister. I answered but there was no one on the other line. I assumed that she was drunk-dialing people and that she called me by mistake. Because everyone knows not to call me after my bedtime unless they want to be killed. I hung up the phone and less than a minute later, it rang again. It was her again and the first thing she said was, "I have some bad news." Scary. Seriously, I thought someone had died or something. It was a completely irrational thought though, because no one would charge her with calling me to tell me that someone had died. Hell, it was 2:30, I wasn't thinking rationally.

The next thing she said was, "I'm calling to tell you that Stephen and Hannah were just arrested for underage drinking." My response was, "I assume you're joking." but unfortunately, she wasn't. Even more unfortunately, they had been drinking at her house. Right after she told me that, call waiting kicked in and it was Hannah, calling from the police station. She was crying and was so upset that the police officer had to take the phone from her and tell me what was going on. He said that they were going to give her a breathalyzer test and that afterwards, we could pick her up and take her home.

So yeah, we got dressed and drove about three blocks to the police station. Since we live so close, we had to wait around for them to finish whatever it was that needed finishing. One of the arresting officers came out to talk to us, said that they picked up 9 underage drinkers, including my two. He told us that my brother-in-law said that they didn't buy the alcohol for the kids, but providing them a place to drink is also against the law. That really pissed me off, that he was trying to get out of trouble when both of them had clearly been doing something wrong.

I asked the police officer what would happen to the "hosts" and he said that they weren't able to bring them in because the three squad cars there were full and they didn't have room. He also said that it was up to the prosecutor to decide whether to press charges against each of them for each underage drinker or whether there would just be one charge for the whole thing. Personally, I'm still so mad, I hope they get them for each one. If I was able to vote...well, lucky for both of them, I'm not.

We took the kids home and tried to go back to sleep but by then, neither of us really felt tired. We talked for a long time and then watched some tv before we were able to fall asleep again. Even then though, I didn't sleep well. Too much bad stuff was running through my head and I eventually gave up. Our plans for Saturday were pretty much ruined, even though we still kept them, because I was too angry and tired to enjoy myself.

I know that kids drink, lots of kids. Hell, we all did it. Except for you, Ian. I'm not really angry at them for that. I am angry at Hannah for lying to us about where she was (she was supposed to be spending the night with a friend), but we've all lied about that too. I am glad that they got caught, because being arrested and handcuffed and taken to the police station probably makes a bigger impression than listening to me bitch about it. At least I know it did for Han. She was really upset, even the next morning.

I do wish that she didn't have to go to court. I expect that they will put her on probation for a while, which sucks, even if she does deserve it. And of course, she's grounded, which means that she has to miss the concert she was planning to attend this Saturday. As for Stephen, there's not a lot I can do with him. He is an adult, technically. I can lecture him about drinking, which I did, but I have no control over what he does outside the house. It will be a long time before I trust him, even longer before Hannah is allowed to go anywhere with him. I am a lot more calm and rational about it today. It happened, and it sucked. But I'm trying not to overreact. So far, I'm succeeding.

The exception is my sister. And her husband. Thankfully, their boys were spending the night with grandpa. Because if those babies had been there while they were having a stupid party, I would have kicked her ass. We haven't spoken since she called me to tell me about the kids. I don't plan on speaking to her for a long time.

I'm so furious with her, not just for what happened Friday night but for the other times when she knew Hannah was drinking and didn't tell me. I'm angry at her for being so pathetic and immature that she and the loser she married think it's acceptable and cool to party with Stephen and his friends, who are almost all under 21. I'm pissed off that two months ago she looked me right in the eye and lied when she said she would keep an eye on Hannah and let me know if she was doing something I wouldn't want her to do.

I'm disappointed that she would rather "be cool" than be honest and mature and an adult. I'm angry that she not only turned a blind eye but also helped and encouraged the children to drink and hide it from their parents. I feel so hurt and betrayed and ashamed of her. Our friendship is severely damaged, possibly past the point of repair. It might be too soon to tell, but I can't ever imagine not feeling the way I do right now to some degree.

The rest of the weekend was uneventful. Casey got home Sunday night at about 6:30. Brian and I were grateful that she wasn't there to see or hear about all the other bullshit that was going on. She had a good time with her friend and was completely worn out. I can't wait to see the pictures. Man, this was a long post.

Anyone who is still here should visit my renter (click the thumbnail below my profile). I'm sure she has a much more entertaining post for you to read, once your eyeballs stop burning from staring at my lavender blog for the last hour :)