Aloha Friday #2 – Maybe Time I’ll Get it Right

A couple of weeks ago I was bee-bopping through the Internet, when I came upon the Aloha Friday meme at An Island Life blog.  I left my comment, and did a post…but apparently forgot to ask a question in my post…which is only like the whole point of the meme. *lol*  So, after hiding in embarrassment for a several weeks, I am once again venturing into the blogosphere – meme style.

So, here’s my question…

Have you ever mis-read directions to a meme and made a “boo-boo”, not finding out about it until too late?  ‘Splain please.   Have a great weekend, y’all!

Trashy Thursday #2 – Words to Live By

Some of my in-laws kill me with their advice.  A few of them have homes that are so clean and orderly, I feel like I’m in a museum when we visit – I’m afraid to touch anything.  These are usually the ones who comment on our housekeeping skills (or the lack thereof).  Sometimes I feel like snarking back, “Oh yeah?  When was the last time you fit two adults, three high-energy children (are there any other kind?), one crackhead dog, two cats and 4 kittens into a two-bedroom house with one interior door (to the bathroom)?  So my parental wisdom for household cleanliness follows.

“All play and no work might cause you to trip over toys, but all work and no play stifles your creative juices!”

Ok, so I just made it up, but give me a break…the juices are flowing freely this morning! *lol*

Having said all that, I think it’s time to pick up the living room today…at some point.  No, it’s not on my cleaning schedule … we don’t have one of those.  But it’s kind of hard to go stretch out on the couch, when you have to clear a path to get there!

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Y’all head on over to White Trash Mom blog to find more tips for the motivationally challenged housekeeper!

Trashy Thursday #1 – Bad Mommies at Work

I nominate the “Inter-Disciplinary Teams” where I work as Trashy Moms/Parents.  Let me ’splain.

I work at a residential/teaching facility for adults with MR/DD (mental retardation and developmental disabilities).  Three of the seven ladies I help care for have g-tubes, where they get fed by a tube that leads to their stomachs.  They get nothing (but the occasional breath strip) by mouth.  Two of the ladies can walk by themselves and have relatively good function of their limbs and good small-motor skills, which sometimes extend to taking the lid off their tubes or occasionally pulling them out (which necessitates a trip to the hospital).

One of these two ladies will open/pull out her tube simply for the attention it gets her. To lessen the probability of either of these two events occurring, she had been outfitten with a “belly band” and a body suit, to make accessing the tube more difficult.

Well, the professionals on the IDT have decided (as they do not want to hear from the people who work most closely with the residents) that the body suits and bands are an unfair restriction of the ladies’ rights.  They have said that they are no longer to wear body suits during the day (when they do wear the belly bands) and secondly, they are not to wear the belly bands at night (but then they wear the suits)!  These are not the staffers, of course, who have to get the residents up at night, give them 2nd and 3rd showers of the day and change their beds multiple times when most 9-to-5′ers are asleep.

To me, this the same type of sh*t ‘logic’ that says, “We never use outlet covers in plugs around toddlers,” “We leave caustic cleaners out, because our kids will not try and get into them if we’ve told them ‘NO’”, and ‘Screw looking both ways when you cross the street’”!

To read about more “Trashy Mommies/Parents”, head on over to White Trash Mom’s blog!

Menu Plan Monday – #1

Monday

Spaghetti Marinara

Tuesday

Macaroni & Cheese

Wednesday

Chicken Fajitas

Thursday

Hamburgers

Friday

Leftovers

Saturday

Burritos

Sunday

Chicken & Dumplings

I’m reallly looking forward to getting ideas from MPM meme members, because we usually have the same stuff over and over again.  I also work 2nd shift, so most days I’m not even home for the family supper.   (But this has a silver lining…my husband does most of the cooking, and he has a lot more experience than I do! *lol*)

MONDAY – The Simple Woman’s Daybook #1

FOR TODAY, Monday, 1 June, 2009

Outside my window…little bits of sunlight coming through the leaves of the lush trees in my backyard, casting shadows on the worn-country-store-turned-storage building next door.

I am thinking…WOOHOO!  I have the day off from work today!

I am thankful for…(see what I was thinking)

From the learning rooms...is this like a homeschooling question?  I’ve been thinking about doing more cooking with the kids this summer.  And I thought about doing it at my Mamaw-in-law’s house.  She is 86 and doesn’t do much anymore, but she L-O-V-E-S her great-grandchildren, and I think would love to share stories about her childhood with them.

From the kitchen…  ooooh, let’s not go there.  I want something filling and simple, that my kids won’t turn up their noses at.

I am wearing...black jeans with a belt, cause they’re starting to slip over the hips (yippee!), a nautical themed collared tee-shirt and my hubby’s sandals.

I am creating…active treatment plans for the mentally-retarded, developmentally disabled adult residents where I work.

I am going…to start using my pill-splitter today.  I’m supposed to take half a Cyclomel (thyroid med) per day, and cutting it with DH’s hunting knife (not that he hunts) “just ain’t cuttin’ it”…so to speak.

I am reading…Donna Partow’s “Becoming the Woman God Wants Me to Be”
I am hoping…to move in the next month or so.

I am hearing…birds chirping outside my window.

Around the house…DH snoring in the bedroom, DD huddled under the covers because she’s terrified of this moth that’s flitting around the kitchen, and the boys sprawled out asleep on the couch.

One of my favorite things…the relative lack of depression I’ve experienced for the last three days!  What a relief!

A few plans for the rest of the week:

• Monday-take a walk with DS1,
• Tuesday-take a walk with DS2,
• Wednesday-take a walk with DD,
• Thursday-clean the coffee pot,
• Friday-pre-pack what I can for our MOVE!,
• Saturday-take it easy because it’s my 5th day of work in a row (very physically demanding)

Here is picture thought I am sharing…(this is the building mentioned above in what’s outside my window, although the shot is from a couple of months back)

Click on the icon above to see other daybooks at Peggy’s meme hub!

Only The Good Friday #1

Trinity & Co.

OK.  So a photographer I am not.  This is my daughter with her two favorite little animal toys, Sneakers and Fluffy…in some order.  She’s had lots of practice coming up with  names for things as she also likes Littlest Pet Shop on Nintendo DS and 2 of her great-grandmother’s cats just had kittens and the cat that adopted us just had kittens.

The picture acutally is more balanced, but cropped funny during the upload.

She is my miracle baby.  A week after finding out she was on the way, I nearly miscarried.  She was born at 32 weeks, one week after the doctor had said, “She’s coming early…we just don’t how now early, so why don’t we give you these steroid shots to help develop her lungs.”  After she was born, she was put in “room 3″ of the NICU at Harris Hospital Downtown in Fort Worth (WONDERFUL PLACE!); it’s my understanding that there are 4 rooms and the lower the number, the closer to discharge.  When she was 2 or 3 days old, I had some folks give her a blessing and she made such wonderful progress from that point on.  They had told us to expect her to be in the hospital at least until her due date.  She was able to leave at 22 days (just over 3 weeks), even though she did not weigh 4 lbs yet, because (as the staff put it) “she’s healthy and we just need the room!”

Leaving her in the hospital on the day I went home was the single hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.  And even the worst ice storm in recent Ft. Worth history on the day we took her home could not dampen the joy I felt having my whole family together once again.

Aloha Friday #1 – Trinity

Well, it’s gotta be “Trinity” for me.  That’s my daughter’s name.  She’s named after a sister of my husband who was either stillborn or died in infancy.  That baby was named after the Trinity River in Texas.  Whatever works, right?  Well, my husband’s parents decided to let him pick his sister’s middle name.  He chose “Sunshine”.  So we decided to let our oldest child, age 6 then, pick his sister’s middle name.  First he wanted “Cherry”…and we tried to explain to him why “Cherry” might not be the best name for a girl, especially in those ‘coming of age’ years.  Secondly, he offered “White”…and that wasn’t quite right either.  He was stuck on his next choice for a L-O-N-G time…”Olive”.  It sounded way old-fashioned.  Finally we were able to agree on “Olivia”.

So, our little girl, who came 2 months early, as our 3rd child had the big, BIG name of  Trinity (for my husband’s sister) Anna (a traditional name in my mother’s paternal line) and Olivia (from her brother).

Thursday Thirteen?

Can anyone tell me WTH has happened to this meme hub?  I enter www.thursdaythirteen.com and it comes up to a hosting site for goDaddy.  Go figure?

Wordless Wednesday – The Smile of a Child

Thursday Thirteen #3 – Phobias

1.  Arachnophobia – fear of spiders. Got this one?  Then you’re in good company.  Fifty percent of women and 10 percent of men share your fears.

2.  Social Phobia – fear of being evaluated negatively in social situations. This is when shyness or low self-esteem crosses over to controlling one’s life and actions.  For instance, I tend not to speak up in larger groups of people.   But sometimes I do it anyway.  And before the kids were born, I did a LOT of acting in theatrical productions.

3.  Aerophobia – fear of flying. This usually occurs after watching movies or newscasts with plane crashes, or losing someone close to them in a crash.

4.  Agoraphobia – fear of open places or crowded public places. I get this one sometimes.  Maybe that’s why I like living in a small town or the country as opposed to a big city.

5.  Claustrophobia – fear of closed in spaces. The example that first came to mind with this phobia is from the tv show M*A*S*H, when Hawkeye could not go into the cave during a bug out, because he felt like he couldn’t breathe and the walls of the cave were closing in on him.

6.  Acrophobia – fear of heights. Fear of heights and vertigo are not the same thing.  I don’t have a problem being up in a skyscraper or looking down from an airplane window.  I did have a problem being on the beam in gym in junior high school…it was only 4″ wide.

7.  Emetophobia – fear of vomit. I’m pretty much ok with this one, although I don’t like it getting on me.  Of course, sometimes having to clean it up at work will make me gag – my own children’s emesis does not seem to affect me that way, though.

8.  Carcinophobia – fear of cancer. People with this phobia are so afraid of developing cancer that they imagine every ache or pain in their body to be a sign of cancer.  After coming in contact with a cancer patient, they will themselves “catch” cancer and thus feel the need to wash themselves repeatedly.

9.  Brontophobia – fear of thunderstorms. Think the Von Trapp children in The Sound of Music when they all run into Maria’s bedroom on her first night with the family and they all wind up singing “My Favorite Things”.

10.  Necrophobia – fear of death/dead things. When my father died at home I was there.  When they came to take him away, I was not.  Later that night, I had to have my mother walk with me back the hallway to my bedroom, as I could not make myself walk back that hallway alone.  There was a smudge on my door where the stretcher or gurney on which they carried my father out bumped into my door.

11.  Cynophobia – fear of dogs.  The fear of being bit and/or developing rabies.  Both my younger children have been nipped by dogs.  Ben has been hesitant ever since it happened to him, but he’s getting better.  He even carried one of the puppies our dog had two weeks ago to me this morning…which surprised me.   An older dog belonging to my FIL bit T-girl (then 3, now 5) on the nose and cheek.  There was some scratching and a smallish puncture wound…all of which healed up with no physical, and apparently no emotional scars.  The first thing T does in the morning is run to check on the puppies. *lol*

12. Glossophobia – fear of public speaking. This affects more people than necrophobia.  According to Jerry Seinfeld “most people at a funeral would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy”

13.  Triskaidekaphobia – fear of the number 13. This fear is believed to have developed from the presence of 13 people at the Last Supper in Christian theology, and then 13 being thought of as unlucky.  There are many examples today…many hotels to not have a floor “13″, or room numbers would go from, say, “212″ to “214″.  I remember years ago reading where even the Queen of England, if there were to be 13 people at a dinner table, would have it split into two tables to avoid having 13 people at one table.  At first, I wasn’t going to put triskaidekaphobia at #13…but then I couldn’t resist! *LOL*

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