Friday, March 4, 2011

Shut the Front Door!

So my adorable Hubby is going out of town on Sunday and will be gone until the following Saturday. His job has him traveling like this for the next year, at least once a month he's gone for a full week. Its been this way for years (12 to be exact) throw in the 4 years in the Marines before that and I should be used to it, right?!?

So this week he totally surprised me by saying "Baby, I'm taking off Friday to spend the whole day, just you and me, before I have to take off. I really appreciate what you do and I want to show you. I know you'll have your hands full alone here next week." Sweetest.... Man.... EVA! So I took off today so that I could spend the day with him.

Lill'D had book club and had to be at school at 7:15 (with 20 donuts). Big'D had FCA (Fellowship for Christian Athletes) also at 7:15.... thank God I live within 10 houses either way of both of their schools. No one was to early or late.

I get back home and the "Old Man" is still sleeping, poor guy is exhausted. I take my shower, get gussied up.... wash dishes from breakfast, take the dogs out, clean out the other pets' cages, start laundry.... I'm now cleaning the Girls' bathroom... and he's still snoozing. So much for my romantic day alone. My youngest will be home in about 5 hours. Here's to hoping he gets up before 2!

Wish me luck ladies, if he's not up in 2 hours... I'm going to get nekkid and go jump on the bed to get his attention, yeah, that should do the trick.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

I'm to the point of buying a Taser to use on my family, please help save them!

Posted over at Happy Housewives Club

Does anyone else have the issue of no one else in their family doing ANYTHING? And by ANYTHING I mean they DO NOTHING but make a bigger mess. They don't pick up behind themselves at all.

Ok Wall o'Text Back story time: grab your coffee and kick your feet up ladies, this is a LONG rant. I am too many issues to even count.

My Mom was a single Mom until I was 10, she moved to Texas from SC when I was 6 months old and she divorced my biological father (we just refer to him as the sperm donor even though they were married from the time she was 15 until she had me at 21). It was just me and her until my little sister was born and she moved us all in with my Step-Dad (who is the closest thing I have EVER had to a Daddy). He's the man I adore, walked me down the aisle, held my babies, taught me to drive, etc.... I couldn't ask for more from a man who didn't have to love me. When I was growing up, Mom worked two jobs (sometimes 3), until she met Dad we lived in section 8 apartments, had no car and I was a latch-key Kid. He came along, moved us into a house, provided everything to take care of us, but Mom still worked full time.

We didn't have a clean house when I was a kid. Mom and Dad both worked full time, there is 10 years between me and my sister so I did most of the cleaning, which was difficult for a 10 yr old to even know what to do! Mom left me a chose list that I had to do everyday when I got home from school and it had to be done before she and Dad got home at 6. But we never made our beds, our rooms were always a wreck.... Every Saturday morning Mom made us get up and do cleaning, I hate those days.

I have never given my kids a chore list in their lives! So I have been my own worst enemy. I sabotaged myself here.

Fast-forward: My home isn't a home, it's a disaster area! Should be quarantined (ok not really but I feel like it some days)! I can't get my kids to make their beds or pick up behind themselves! Why should they? I never made them when they were little, they are almost 11 and 15 now (both girls). When I asked my oldest to help me pick up around the house, her response was "Isn't that your job!" door slam.... broke my heart and sent me into tears. My youngest likes to help clean, she loves to dust.... other people's houses, just not ours. She loves helping my Hubby's grandmother but if I ask her to pick up her shoes from the den floor she blows a gasket. If I pick up her stuff and leave it on her bed she complains that I am messing up her room (even though you can't even see some of the carpet in there!)

I love my husband, I really do. I'm trying my best to do every thing since he works so much to provide for us so I can be home when the kids get home.... but there is only so much a woman can do alone. He complained yesterday that he couldn't find any dress socks for work, of course he couldn't... he left them all in the floor behind the door in HIS bathroom, so I refuse to wash them. I'm tired of having to clean behind 4 people, 2 dogs and various caged pets.

I do all the cooking, all the laundry, all the cleaning, all the house errands, all the kid running and car pooling, and all the home repairs (unless I screw it up bad enough that the Hubby steps in and fixes something or I just call some one to do it).

I do work 3-4 hours a day while the kids are at school, I hate cleaning when they get home, I want to spend time with them.

As I sit here at MY desk, its covered in clay and books and toys, empty glasses and I swear there is a plate on the floor under my chair... all thanks to the girls. I'm looking at a mountain of laundry I picked up out of his bathroom (which I am about to go clean cause it smells funny, he is the only one that uses it but can't even bother to swish the potty) and his shoes in the den floor, my oldest dumped her gym bag out of the coffee table and my youngest dumped her back pack out on the couch... a week's worth of cleaning is chasing me around my home threatening to eat me ALIVE!

I really am to the point of buying a taser, lol. Some one help me out here, what can I do to get my family to step up? At least by picking up after themselves!

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Almost finished the Linen Closet


I am on a world wide tour of my own home!

Yup, I am picking one area/room/problem a week and getting it done. No excuses! No laziness! I mean business this time.

So this week its my hallway linen closet, its a beast of a thing but not enough room. Maybe I am organizing it wrong. If anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears!

I had one goal this week and I ALMOST finished has night. We live in an older house.... actually we bought my grandmother's house from her estate when she passed away 10 years ago. I love raising my kids in the house my Daddy grew up in and that I spent many of my summers in! It always seems to have SOMETHING falling apart that needs to be repaired.

This week I took on my hallway linen/medicine closet. Its 48" wide and floor to ceiling. It lives across the hall from my girls' bedrooms, next door to their bathroom.

I have organized hair products, medicines, first aid supplies, dental, paper goods, bath stuffs and make-ups. Now I just need to get the laundry hamper emptied, 3 drawers organized and cleaned out and the last of the top shelf done! Plus get all their towels and sheets back in it. What a mess! I am removing the doors and painting them and putting up the new trim in two weeks. if anyone has any suggestions for it, please let me know.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

WoW! Forgot I even had this blog.

Let's see what we can do about that. I just posted this wall of text over at The Happy Housewives Club


A little back story - I didn't choose to be a housewife, I had a career all lined out, I had worked my way up the ladder, was running my own department in what I thought was a successful company until September 2007 when the lay-offs began. I was the 4th to go.

I embraced it at 1st! This is SO awesome! I will just take a few months off and hang out with the kids, be home when Jason got home, have dinner ready the whole she-bang! I'd wait and go back after the holidays.... Then the market went even further south, no one was hiring. I fell into a very deep depression. My kids had activities, they weren't babies anymore. They didn't need me as much as I thought they did, which was totally my fault to begin with. They were used to me working. I was seriously lost with no idea what path to take.

My husband was in the Marines when we married (I have known him since I was 12) we married when I was 19. Lanie came along just a few months after our 1st anniversary. I went back to work immediately, my husband was over seas, I hated being home without him but I missed so much of her 1st few years. He got out of the military, we bought our 1st house, he found a job he really liked and started putting in a ton of hours to move up the ladder, neither one of us ever went to college so we were both REALLY proud of where our careers were heading due to our hard work, but neither of us noticed where our family heading until almost to late. Lissa joined us 4 years later, again by a total shock. When they say an antibiotic for a silly little cold messes up your BC's they aren't lying!

So back to 2008, I'm home, miserable, depressed, and making everyone around me miserable. My house was a TOTAL WRECK. We never had anyone over, I was a shut in. I only got out of bed when the kids where coming home and some days, not even then. I gained 45 pounds, started smoking again and was heading downhill SUPER fast with no brakes on.

Jason finally put his foot down. "I make enough to support this family, I want you to understand that I WANT you to be home full-time. So please just stop looking for work, enjoy your time with the girls! Get a hobby to do while they are in school. I hate seeing you like this and I hate what this is doing to our family." That snapped me out of it. I dove into being a housewife full steam. Most days I am still totally lost and a little bit of a wreck but I'm trying and giving it my best! Our marriage is heading back in the right direction, I talk to my kids EVERY night about their day. I know their friends, we have dinner together and I don't have any strange smells in my home anymore.

Ta Da! Like I wasn't already worried about enough going on here at home, in comes the Big C. It's sort of a funny story (as in odd, not really haha funny) actually. February 2009 my DH took both our DDs to a Father-Daughter Dance so I splurged with a little take out dinner. Within a couple of hours of them returning home, I was pretty sure I had food poisoning from my favorite Italian restaurant! Come Monday, I was so dehydrated and still sick, I couldn't get into our family doctor so I headed to primacare. The PA there swore he thought it was my gal bladder and that it needed to be removed. I told him no thanks! He sent me for a abdominal sonogram.... that's when they found it! My right kidney had a HUGE mass. About the size of a small grapefruit. Now mind you, up until some bad chicken I had never been really sick my entire life (knock on wood). Other than chicken pox as a kid, no broken bones, still had my tonsils until I was 29!

So I followed up with my family doctor (a general practitioner) the next day, he sent me to a nephrologist (kidney specialist). She called me on a Friday at 4:45 in the afternoon, her office was closed but she had gotten my results and wanted me to know as soon as possible. She said she hated having to tell me over the phone but she wanted me in her office 1st thing Monday morning.... Sure enough, Stage 2 Renal cancer. My husband wasn't home, the girls were (8 and 12 at the time) running around the house playing. I'm pretty sure I dropped the phone. Here was this lady I had only met once who had made me pee in a cup, give blood, take an MRI and be poked and prodded telling me I was in some serious trouble... OVER THE PHONE! I was devastated.

I called my husband and asked him if he could come home a little early, sent my kids to play at my In-Laws house for a couple of hours and broke the news to him. He is my rock, he is my Champion and my Backbone. Pretty sure I would have just melt, a la Wicked Witch, into a puddle in my kitchen floor if it wasn't for him. "No big deal! You're to much of a hard ass for God to take you from me so soon. Besides, who would wash my socks and cut the crust of the girls' sammiches!?!" I was 3 months from my 33rd birthday and 4 months from our 14th anniversary. My kids were still babies! They needed me, he needed me.... I NEEDED me.

12 days later I had 2/3rds of my right kidney removed. They decided to leave me with enough to function just in case some thing happened to my left kidney. I was one of the lucky ones, I watched my Mom's BFF suffer with Brest Cancer that traveled her entire body, wrack her entire system, leave her in pain and then finally take her at a very young age, from all of us that love her. I count my self among one of the BIGGEST lottery winner EVER. I had no Chemo, no radiation. I got a scar the kids all think looks "Super Cool".

Jason got an iPad for one of his contractors. I stumbled across Darla's book this past weekend and it made me realize I still have a LOT of work to do but I am NOT alone. I don't have to be. I have a great family that needs me.

So that's my story. Sort of long, I did mention in my intro that I tend to babble. Same goes for my typing, LOL!