A sunny day for two boys

Levi loves cats. He wanted one for ages. We finally got one. She's turned out to be snotty, aloof cat. We've always allowed her to come and go outside as she pleases. She's mostly out unless it's really cold. She doesn't need us much.

So Levi wanted a nice cat. One of those that will actually come up to you and ask to be petted. Heck, I'd kind of like to have one like that myself. We love Twilight, but affectionate she ain't.

I told Levi a while back that we'd let him adopt a kitten for his birthday. That falls the day before school starts so I decided to take him today to look. Wanted him to have the critter for a little while before he returns to school so he'll have a little time to bond with it.

Off to the Humane Society we went. The first one that caught his eye was a little orange one who was trying desperately to crawl out of the cage to him. We (Levi, Lane and I) all played with him and all liked him. Since I had urged Levi not to be too impulsive he also played with an orange and white one, a grey and white one and a grey adult. He still went back to that first, little orange one. Lane and I both wanted him to pick the orange/white one but he was firm that the orange one was the one for him.

Levi adopted him. And named him Sunny.

Levi made a good choice. Sunny has been so affectionate. He seems to love to be petted. He also loves to play. Before going to the Humane Society we stopped at Wal Mart for a new litter box, cat house (you know what I mean) and toys. Sunny loves his house and his toys (and finally used his litter box, much to my relief). It's so gratifying. I hate when you get them stuff like this and they never look twice at it. But Sunny loves his new stuff. And we love Sunny.

Ty, our dog, is reserving her opinion. She'll chase our current cat if she'll run and ignore her if she won't. She's checked Sunny out but doesn't seem to care about him one way or another. Twilight, our current cat, is SO not happy about Sunny's presence. She gets away from him then growls and hisses. We'll have to keep an eye on her.

Levi and Sunny are now snuggled up in Levi's bed for the night. They looked awfully cute when I tucked them in. Not only is Levi tickled with his new kitten, but I feel like we did a good deed in rescuing that kitten. It was a sunny day for both of them.

Thanks, Mother Nature. I take it back.

Woke this morning to an overcast sky and NO wind whatsoever! Lane was up so I quickly woke Levi and told them both to hurry and prepare their rockets for launching. It took a little while as we ran into a construction snag - something done wrong that had to be fixed. Finally got that done and went flying to the high school soccer field - a good, wide-open place to launch. Shoot. Someone was spraying the field. All this time there are occasional sprinkles and the sky is threatening to dump on us at any moment. Just for the record, rocket engines and igniters do not mix well with water.

Went flying to the other end of town to another set of soccer fields. Held our breath with each launch. That's always a heart-stopping moment between when the boys press the launch button and the time the rocket actually lifts off. Whew! They both worked. Well, sort of. Levi's had two engines, side by side. Only one engine ignited so it went up about 200' then turned sideways and flew horizontally about 500'. Oops! Oh, well. The rules only state that they have to be launched. They don't say a word about them flying vertically!

Problem is, I think I prayed too hard for the rain to hold off. It's been cloudy all day and we've seen nary a drop since launching.

Guess I should have been more specific. Do you think I'd get struck by lighting if I prayed for the rain to start now after praying for it to stay away all morning?

I'd better not risk it.

I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died

Lane was wanting to air up his bicycle tires this evening. He was looking for an air pump but I told him to use the air compressor. I showed him how to do it. When he was done, I told him to turn the little red valve back to the off position.

He said, "Why?"

I said, "Because I said so."

He said, "But you don't know anything. You're a woman!" And then gave me the world's biggest cat-that-ate-the-cream grin.

Lucky for him airing up a bicycle tire doesn't require the use of a tire iron. If it did, I probably would have picked it up and beaten him with it.

Then, to add insult to injury, I came inside in a huff and told his dad what he said. Steve burst out laughing.

As long as I'm murdering the kid, I might as well throw the dad in for free.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Just for the record, Levi was wise enough to keep his mouth shut.

Mother Nature, you fickle bitch

Fair time is quickly approaching. The boys enter rockets. Those rockets you have to built from scratch. Let me tell you, if you've never built one of these, they are time consuming! Very. And this year both boys built harder rockets so they took longer. One requirement of entering them in the fair is that they have to be launched. Well, the boys finished construction on Monday. They were going to let them set up for 24 hours so we'd be ready to launch on Tuesday. It's been strangely calm here for weeks. And calm is good since those puppies can float for a long way even on a calm day. Therefore, launching on a windy day creates the risk of losing the rocket. A lost rocket can't be entered.

But it's been calm. Until Tuesday, that is. Since the rockets have been built, it's been windy.

Go figure.

Where'd he get those genes?

Levi is going to run cross country in the fall and needed a physical. I HATE the free physicals the schools give since they check very little. We're lucky in that the kids are rarely ever sick so almost never have to go to the doctor. I decided to take him in to the doc for his physical plus a complete check-up. He'll be 13 in a few weeks. He is now 5'5" tall and weighs 89 lbs. He is in the 95th percentile on height and the 25th percentile on weight. Can you say bean pole? He certainly doesn't take after me physically. He must get that from his dad.

That and his moodiness.

The brilliant intellect? Now THAT he gets from me.

Hell Fire and Damnation

It's hot. It's damned hot. 109-degrees today. One-oh-anything is way too hot for this girl. Actually, I don't care for much over 80 but I can stand it up to around 95. One-oh-freaking-nine is NOT acceptable. Especially when one adds the humidity. If I'd wanted a sauna, I'd have gone to the gym. See me? See me NOT at the gym?

Only two and a half months till October.

Wow. It's really true!

I hate, hate, hate to clean house so have always joked that I'm allergic to housework. But I think it may actually be true! I cleaned house today. Cleaned it to within an inch of its life. The whole darned thing. Oh, I clean it at other times but never all at once. I usually compartmentalize so I can stomach doing it. Not today. One end to the other - top to bottom.

Shortly after I finished, Steve and I ran some errands. We were gone for about two hours. Within five seconds of walking in the door, I had a sneezing fit. I sneezed around 10 times in a row. I'm never a machine-gun sneezer. Two times, three, tops. Not tonight. Since then, my eyes have been watering, my nose itching and running with occasional sneezes thrown in for fun. I've never had an allergy attack come on so fast! I think my system just couldn't handle the entire house being clean at all once.

I'll never make that mistake again.

"Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but is also a disruption of thought."
- Arthur Schopenhauer

The busy, noisy hey-what-are-you-doing-what's-for-dinner-come-look-at-this-I'll-go-with-you-so-I-can-drive one came home yesterday. And he brought all of these characteristics home with him. He really enjoyed his trip and getting away from all of US for a while. Huh. Go figure.

He changes the whole dynamic of the house just by coming home to it. Upon his return, our house went from sedate to static. It's like the rest of us are the pond and he's the stone that gets skipped across it, leaving little rings of energy spreading out in all directions.

Do me a favor and don't tell him, but we kind of missed him.

Oh, yeah. THAT was a good idea

I know you're probably getting sick of hearing about psycho sister-in-law but, since this is kind of my place to blow smoke, here I go again ....

Remember her last huge blow-up because I had the audacity to do some work for MIL without her and thus cutting her out of earning a few bucks? The premise was that she and BIL owe MIL so much money that she needed the work. (That much is true, at least.)

She e-mailed me today ... SO happy. They've had problems with the lender on their car loans. He is an idiot so I can't fault her there. They were finally able to refinance their house and add the car loans to it so they could get away from idiot lender. Yahoo! Wise not only to get away from him but also rates on home loans are lower than consumer loans so they'll be saving money. Right?

Nope.

Since they were refinancing anyway, they borrowed extra money so they could build a deck onto their house. Their ranch-style house. Which is flat on the ground. Soooo, let's add a few thousand dollars of debt that we desperately don't need to have as we can't pay all our bills as it is so we can build a deck, oh, a foot off the ground.

Yeah. Great freakin' idea.

Do you ever just want to slap the shit out of someone??

"Silence is the true friend that never betrays."
- Confucius

Hear that? It's the sound of quietude. After experiencing it today, I remembered that I had heard it before. Long ago. Before we had kids.

The busy, noisy, in your face, hey-what-are-you-doing-what's-for-dinner-come-look-at-this-I'll-go-with-you-so-I-can-drive one left on a four day Youth Leader's trip this morning. That leaves me home with only the quiet one.

*sigh*

I'm so sad.

Blog-napped...

While catching up on other people's blogs this morning I came across this on Denise in CT's blog (who copied it from cmmomofmany). Like Denise said, I get a lot of the surveys but rarely do them. This one seemed a little different so I'll play!

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4 and write what it says.
Narcissus in Chains by Laurell K. Hamilton - "He gave me directions and I read them back to him." (Exciting, huh?)

2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What can you touch?
The extra computer monitor that my @(*%& husband brought home from work and Lane immediately hooked up so we can have two monitors showing the same thing. Yeah, I can see the need for that!

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?
A M*A*S*H rerun.

4. Without looking, guess what time it is.
9:30 a.m.

5. Now look at the clock. What is the actual time?
9:53 a.m.

6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?
Nothing at all. Both boys are gone and Steve is still sleeping. No sounds here but the whirring of the tower fans and the clicking of the keyboard. There aren't even any outdoors sounds filtering in. The neighbors must all be sleeping in.

7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?
About 20 minutes ago ... taking a smoke break.

8. Before you started this survey, what did you look at?
Denise in CT's blog

9. What are you wearing?
My favorite green cargo pants, white tee-shirt (anyone who knows me could have guessed THAT) and my green crocs. I'd normally still be in jammies but when Lane gets off work soon I'm gonna drag him to some garage sales. He'll be thrilled.

10. Did you dream last night?
Yes, but I don't remember any dreams. Got to bed way too late and woke up way too early. Slept really hard in between.

11. When did you last laugh?
Last night was a good laughing night ... had dinner with "the girls" and we had a lot of laughs - mostly margarita-driven. Then had coffee with some of the girls in my family and we had a lot of laughs there, too. The former is typical ... the latter is not.

12. What is on the walls of the room you are in?
One side has tons of family pictures, mostly of the boys. The other has my cowboy art.

13. Seen anything weird lately?
Yeah, a couple of days ago Lane and I were driving down main street and I saw a guy standing on his porch playing an accordion. That was a bit odd.

14. What do you think of this quiz?
It's pretty fun. At least it's different from all those "what is your favorite color" ones.

15. What is the last film you saw?
At the theater - "X-Men; the Last Stand"

16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy?
First: a new truck for Steve. Second: mother-in-law's ranch

17. Tell me something about you that I don’t know.
I've been having a bit of trouble with my MS flaring up lately. Haven't told anyone I know. Other than that, probably nothing. If you know me in person you know I'm pretty much an open book.

18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?
For the world, end prejudice of all kinds. For me, teach everyone MANNERS!

19. Do you like to dance?
Heck yeah! Haven't done it in quite a while, though

20. Comment to George Bush:
I think you're trying to do the right thing (even though that hasn't always worked) and not just the popular thing. I admire that.

21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?
Had I had one, she would have been Brady Loren. Brady because we liked it and Loren was my grandmother's middle name.

22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?
He was. He is Lane William. Lane because we liked it and William was his grandfather's first name.

23. Would you ever consider living abroad?
Sure

24. What do you want God to say to you when you reach the pearly gate?
Not sure what I think He would say but I'm hoping, at the very least, He'll look over His ledger, shake His head and say "Come on in anyway."

25. 3 people who must also do this quiz in THEIR blog:
No one I know IRL. Maybe some of the other SSers who blog surf the roll will want to add it

Uh-oh. Here we go again!

Lane and Levi were playing a game in the family room last night. I was in the kitchen not far from the open door. I heard them discussing strategy. It's always great to hear them actually talk to each other and not bitch at each other so I enjoy listening in a bit.

Then it hit me.

Levi's voice is changing.

Oh, no. Here we go again!

My Up and Down Saturday

Spent the morning with my stomach in knots. I honestly felt a little sick. Cameron's funeral was at 2:00. I knew it was going to be hard. Hard doesn't even begin to describe it. I think I started crying before the service even started. I was okay until I noticed that they had a stand down front holding his electric guitar and his best AC/DC t-shirt ... two of his favorite things in the world. The service itself was nice. At one point, the pastor said he was going to sit down and, if anyone wanted to come up and say something about Cameron, they were welcome. That was very poignant. Cameron's Dad spoke first. The tears flowed freely for me then. I even spoke a few words. I debated doing it but, when faced with circumstance where I want to do something but chicken out, I always regret it. My legs were shaking so hard I wasn't sure I could climb those two little steps to the podium, but I did. I thought the family might think it was odd that someone they don't even know was speaking. Cameron's Mom and Dad are the only ones I've ever met and they don't know me well. But that's why I wanted to talk to them. I wanted to tell them that we always found it a pleasure for Cameron to visit. The boys have some friends that make me cringe just knowing they're coming over. Not Cameron. Never. He was always well-behaved, fun to have around and was even nice to the little brother. I just wanted his family to know that there are people they never even met that thought he was pretty special.

When the service was over, we came home, changed clothes and headed to a cookout to celebrate July 4th. That was a bit of an abrupt gear-changing. Carol bought a new house and wanted to having everyone over for a cookout since she now has the space. It really was a nice afternoon and evening. We just sat and visited, played croquet and horseshoes, and visited more. I think if it had been one of those boisterous, happy-type parties, I wouldn't have been in the frame of mind to handle it. But it was low-key enough to be just the ticket. In a way, it was a gentle reminder that life goes on.

I'm still praying for Cameron's family. Cameron's Dad said that Cameron had accepted Christ and he knew without a doubt that Cameron was now in heaven with his God. I hope that thought brings them some little bit of peace in these next weeks and months.