Spanking........

And in conjunction with the rant I just posted, add this. States such as California (surprise, surprise, surprise) are trying to pass or are passing laws to make spanking illegal. Say what? Hello, has no one learned the difference between a spanking and a beating? Apparently not. For reference let me refer you to a book I was given years ago when I questioned how I disciplined my children: "To Spank or not to Spank" by John Rosemond. It defines the difference between spanking as discipline and beating a child, which most reasonable people wouldn;t agree with anyway.
I don;t know who out there has kids and who doesn't. If you have managed to raise your kids to be respectful, responsible, polite, caring people without spanking, more power to ya. I don;t advocate it to be used in every circumstance anyway. I would much rather parent by talking, grounding, etc. But how do you get the point across to a 2 yr old that she is not to touch things? Do you remove the items where possible out of her reach until she is old enough not to break them? Or do you teach her to respect them by making the point that if she continues to do what she has been told not to, there will be a consequence that may not feel very good? I'm not talking about taking the belt to her, I am talking about a light slap to the hand---actually I would put her hand in my palm, and the smack would hit about 1 % of her hand and 99% of mine. She heard the slap more than felt it. But it made it's point. With my first 2 kids, we put everything up. They still don't know, at 12 and 14, not to touch certain things--neither do my stepdaughters at 14 and 16. But my 5 yr old will tell you that you can;t mess with this or that. I couldn;t tell you the last time I spanked her----she is getting old enough to ground from tv, video, cd player, playing outside or with certain toys. But at 2, or even 3, no she was not. I gave up spanking my boys when I married my husband-because I did not believe in treating his kids and mine unequally, and I was not about to spank them and have them scream child abuse to their mom when they got home. My husband also did not spank my boys. We have gotten really good at making them miserable in other ways. Grounding is the biggest because if you can;t have or do something, isn;t that what you want? Makes the point.
But this is another case of where the govt wants to tell us what we can and can't do in our own homes. They can;t even put criminals in jail and keep them there for any amount of time, and yet they want to criminalize how some choose to discipline their kids. Again clean up their own house before they start messing with mine.

club pink, david bell, pelosi, etc.

The biggest thing I have to say to all of the above is PPPPBBBBBLLLLLLTTTTTT!!!!! Stick it up yours, in other words. Club pink or whatever they choose to call themselves does not speak for me or many other AMERICAN women I know. As far as putting Hillary on alert, as well as other candidates as to the need to pull out of Iraq: you know, I'm not real happy we are still there, I don;t agree with many things this President and administration has said or done, but by God he IS still the President, and our troops ARE still over there, and both Bush and our troops should be shown the respect due them by their job title. My oldest stepdaughter tried to back me in a corner one time by telling me she would respect me when I respected her. She was quickly informed by me, and later by her father when she complained, that I was owed the respect due my position as a parent in the household, and she was due the respect of a child of the household. And that respect did not mean I did not hold her accountable for her actions--but that I would hold her to them because I respected her and the other family members too much to let her go unchecked. I hold Bush accountable for the actions he has taken, just as I hold the members of BOTH parties accountable for theirs. This is why I vote. Do you?
Then we have an article by I believe his name is David Bell of the LA times. A lovely newspaper--my local one is bad enough, heaven forbid I should have to rely on the Times for my news. If I am not mistaken, his tale is that 9-11 was not horrible enough for us as a country to have reacted as we did. What did we have to get angry about? We only lost 3000 people, give or take. Other countries have lost so many more and not reacted by shoving a nation into war.
Oh please, get a life and a set of balls. Gonads, if you prefer. Someone, or several someones, take 4 of our planes and use them as suicide devices and take all those innocent people with them. These hijackers did not know their victims, except as Americans. The victims had done nothing to the hijackers except be born in this country and go about their lives. What freaking call did these assholes have to do this to our people and our country? If we had let their actions go unanswered then we would be the laughingstocks, and we would have been under a progression of increasingly severe attacks, because we did not have the balls to try to put a stop to it. Maybe he needs to read history a little closer. Even my 12 year old gets it.
I am seeing where Nancy Pelosi had a conference of some sort with members of the blogging community. Funny, I don;t remember getting an invite to that. But then again, she wouldn't want to hear what I, as a voting white female, would tell her. I would tell her to get over her damn self and do what is right. Fund the troops so that thye can get their job done and get the hell out of Iraq. Quit screwing around with my rights (and yes I know we lost a bunch under the GOP, too) so I can put the Vaseline up and get on with my life. Get your nasty hand out of my wallet--I earned this money, not you. Start holding people in your own party accountable for their actions before you start f****** around with those who oppose you. Get your own hands clean first, then you can throw stones. Otherwise, baby, your glass house is going to come tumbling down in the next election. Remember the election of 1994? When Newt and his gang swept y'all out to sea? It can happen again, sweetie pie.
On another note, those of you who don;t vote need to. That is how you change things. Read the Constitution-----a copy of the original, not the watered down version those in power would like you to read. Read about our Revolution and the causes for it. Don;t read the rewritten versions being taught in most of our schools today---read the true accounts by those who lived thru it. Read about the terrorist acts perpetrated against our country in just the last 30 years.

Then tell me we have no right to fight against it.

You really don;t want to hear what I'll say back.

musings and more.....

Apparently I am not going to upload a picture of monkeys from the zoo. But that is what this week has felt like in some ways.

Off Sunday---it snowed and I really felt the need to go to church, but I'm not endangering my kids to do so. So we stayed home, at least until the salt truck ran and the traffic was moving at a more normal pace--then we went grocery shopping. But I swear I prayed the whole time.......

Monday, Work and school. I got off work at 4 and the district manager walked into my store at 3:30 to do his preinventory check. I left at 4. Boys had All county orchestra auditions at 7---we left at 6:40---it was freezing rain. I quit 5 minutes later, jsut as I was thinking this was not such a good idea. By the way both boys made the cut....Yippeee........

Tuesday, Inventory, 6 am. Great shrink number---only .03 below last year, but at least it didn't raise and we are NOT a shrink store---that means the dm and dm oof loss prevention basically live in your store. Left at 3, picked up 5 yr old. went home, vegged out.

Wednesday, snow day. Starts out like this---I get up just as boys are headed for school bus and one opens door and says hey it snowed. I call neighbor and she says school closed. Yippee. Shellie sick as a dog--she had woke me up at 10:30 the night before with a raging fever and tummyache. I cancelled my PT appt and stayed home--not that I could have gotten there at that time anyway with the roads. Ron came home from work by 1 and I left for work at 12:15---he has 4 wheel drive and my tires are bad, so thank goodness the roads had been cleared by then.

Thursday, went to PT, went to work, stood outside in 20 degree snowy nasty colkd weather for and hour and a half watching my furniture guy unload a 53 foot trailer by himself--only one who could pull the skids--I am not cleared by dr. Came home, went to bed.

Friday, went to PT, went shopping for $1/yd fabric at Walmart and tried to find a Spirograph for Shellie. No luck on spirograph, too much luck on fabric. Went to lunch with former boss who is also a great friend. annoyed waitress by lollygagging at table after finishing meal. My friend paid for meal. How cool is that!!!! Picked up Shellie at daycare, came home, napped, woke up and told boys, home by then, to get firewood in. Spent evening vegging out and reading new quilting magazine.

Just the ordinary BS, I guess.

I've have decided that Little Critter is the coolest set of kids books ever. My kids have all acted like him at different times.

Now little one is in bed, all dosed up because of stuffy nose, and me and boys are going to watch Blazing Saddles. What's that---Did you say the sheriff is near? No dadgum it I said the sheriff is----"GONG!!!"

Can't help it I am going to be rolling on the floor laughing my rear end off in a minute. I think it is one of the most politically incorrect movies I've ever seen--and I love it all to pieces.

Later, gator.....

Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water....

Da-dum da dum da dum da dum dadumdadum.......Or however the Jaws theme goes.....
Just when I thought it was safe to be the parent of teenagers again.......
Anyway, when the jr and freshman came home from school today, we got into a debate of sorts over why they do not have to take semester finals next week. The excuse is that their attendance was great, so this is their reward, basically. So in other words this county is going to have teenagers at loose ends next week because they do not have to be in school for these tests. I think it is a crock. Anyone who knows me also knows that my kids go to school when they are supposed to. They have to be fevered or throwing up to avoid school. The junior, my 16 yr old stepdaughter, is just ever so thankful that she gets nearly a week off to pull herself back together again. I told her with a three day weekend at the start of the week and one at the end of the week, that should be plenty of time to recuperate. And since she and my son are not taking finals, they really don't have anything to rest up from. She then tells me that if she took these tests she would flunk for sure. Ummm....I thought the purpose of tests was to make sure you knew the stuff that had been taught during the term......I'll leave you to the obvious conclusion on that one......

Then when her dad walks in from work, he goes to the kitchen to fix himself a couple of sandwiches---he and I had already decided that it was fend for yourself night for dinner---and she goes in to corner him. I find out a little later--after getting him off to himself and asking what her latest deal is---that she was instructed by her mother (the custodial parent) to ask him if it was ok is she goes to Las Vegas with one of her friends, when and how long who knows. Of course Ron's first answer was NO. She says this girl and her folks are ok, her mom has met them a couple of times, she spends days at a time with this friend, so he should know she is ok. He looks at her and hands her the set-down. He does not know this girl or her family, so his answer is no. Then he asks why all of a sudden after years is his opinion suddenly sought after by her mom. She certainly hasn't asked for it before. She lets the girls watch what they want---at least it seems that way when we have forbidden certain shows and movies, and yet they have seen them----does not monitor their Net usage----as shown by the number of times we have had to jump in and give the "Myspace" lecture. She certainly did not ask his opinion when she decided to let the 16 yr old start dating at 14. Every time we lay down a rule or try to explain the rules, we are shot down. Ron even told the 16 yr old that he knows this is why neither girl comes over as often as they used to--because we have raised the bar on behavior. We have set rules on what is allowed and what isn't.
I told him that I had two opinions on the LV issue---either momma is wanting to say no but doesn't want to be the bad guy, or she hopes he will say yes, then anything that goes wrong can be laid at his feet. He concurs. He also told Kris that the answer was going to have to come from her mom, because since he didn;t know the people involved, he couldn;t logically give any answer but no.
I hope her mom says no too, but past history shows that if it is something we oppose, she's all for it. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Since she is custodial, end game is up to her. (Just like I have had to tell my ex on occasion).

picks and pans

Or whatever. My first day back at work dealing with employees and customers. Not too bad. A little sore at the end of my shift, but that's to be expected after being off so long. Boring, since I can';t really do anything yet--no lifting, etc.

I think the next time a teacher tells my kid he has to make up a test after school, I'm going to shoot her a note telling her that since the school bus is his way home, she better have another plan.Chris had to make up a Spanish test since he missed it last Thursday for a dr appt. Personally I think he should have been given a seat in the back of the room and told to take it during class time. That's what we were always told. She can;t penalize a student for transportation reasons. My husband's ex fought that one earlier this school year, and won.

Then we have the state teacher's union requesting a 6% pay raise this legislative session. Bull****.I'd like to see that on my next raise. Wouldn't you? More than that, I would like to see some accountibility for my money--some results that would show me a raise is warranted. Yeah right. They have fought merit raises, teacher testing, and anything that would require them to show why they should have or keep their position. Gee, in my job, if we don;t show that we have performed our jobs, we don;t get a raise; sometimes we don;t get to keep our job. Unlike the state job thing----must be nice to have a job for life.

Then on the radio coming home today, I hear that some citizen/legislative oversight committee or something is recommending that our state delegates/senators receive a raise from $15G to $20 G this year alons, and that their pay will double by the year 2009. I'd like to get $15G for 60 days work. Plus all the perks of special sessions, for which they also get paid per diem. Please, taxpayers, wake up!!!!!!!!!

superhero/supervillian quiz

From a link on this website--wvmountainhome--we all took this quiz to see which superhero or supervillian we would be. Results were"

Me: Spiderman/Riddler
Ron: The Flash/Riddler
Chris: Spiderman/Dr.Doom
Ben: The Flash/Mr.Freeze
Kate: WonderWoman/Riddler

Hmmm........

quiet, gray, day.....

Never ever plan on a sunny day this time of year. It's been gray and windy and "threatening to storm" all day. Just one of those days where you just want to curl up on the couch under a blanket next to a fire with a cup of hot chocolate and a book.

Or at least I would like to.

Except its not quite cold enough for a fire, even if I had the passing laughable thought that I could actually get one started long enough for it to catch. Then there is the fact that with 4 kids in the house, 1 of whom is sick, it's not highly freaking likely that I would have been able to laze the day away reading in any room of the house. Not even the bathroom when I HAVE to go. They knocked on the door 3 times while I was in the shower earlier.

But on the other hand, after I showered and prettied up a bit (stop laughing, Mike!), I left the sick 5 yr old napping in her room (you know she is sick when she voluntarily takes a nap) while the 14 yr old son stayed here (after requesting that I buy him a razor---yes he is to that point--but no where near an everyday thing yet) to keep watch over her, and took the other 2 to ACmoore and Wally World, then dropped the 12 yr old off at his friend's to stay the night.

Then after dinner--takeout--the 5 yr old wanted to play PS2, but the others were watching tv, so to distract her, she and I began a quilting project. She is putting quilt pieces together the way she wants them , and I am sewing them to make a baby doll quilt. The top piece is about half done, and quite honestly, her taste is placing the colors together could be better, but she is 5 and just had a whole new world of things to do with Mommy opened up for her, so I am telling her how beautiful the quilt is. The important thing is she thinks it is, and she spent time with Mommy learning how to do something new, and sharing in my hobby, instead of just watching me or walking around bored while we all did our own thing.

And she can;'t wait for tomorrow to get here so she can work on her quilt some more!!!

Isn't that just the coolest thing?

Beats the hell out of reading by myself......

One piece of advice....

One of these days I will learn never ever to ask a group of kids where they want to go to eat. After Ben's concert tonight at the middle school, me and the 4 musketeers piled into the car and I had to open my mouth and ask if anyone was hungry. I got requests for Subway, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, McDonald's; you name it, it was an option for someone. I finally just waited for the uproar to subside and said that I was going to the ATM and we were going to the food court at the mall and everyone could get what they wanted as long as it was to go, so I could go home and nurse my flu.
2 of us opted for Chinese, 1 for Japanese (thank God it wasn't sushi), and the youngest 2 opted for pizza. Then we had to follow the slowest driver in the world home--all the way home, as everyone kept moaning about how good the food smelled and weren't we ever going to get home so they could eat.

Ah, but I got the thank-you's in bunches from all of them after they ate!!!

So I guess the minor aggravations were worth it.

Now all are asleep except for Kate, the 14 yr old, and since her dad just walked in the door from work, neither of them will probably hit the sack for a while. They don't get a lot of daddy/daughter time anymore, so I can't begrudge it. I did request some husband/wife time at some point this weekend, but we'll see. Probably end up in bed, tv on, tissues and cough drops handy as we hack and cough and choke through the night. Not pleasant, just the tail end of a nasty bout with the flu. Enough to turn anyone off his or her feed.

Where's my inhaler? and Nyquil? LaLa Land here I come!!!

Goodnight!

One of those days....

Did ya ever have one of those days where you just wish you could crawl back into bed and pretend you weren't an adult with responsibilities? That was my day today. Starting the day taking the 5 yr old to mom's while I went to PT, because little fuss was too sick to go to day care and her 14 yr old sister was up all night throwing up so I couldn't leave her with her. While I wait for the dr to call me back for my appt., I call our family dr to try to get the little one in, because she just finished her 3rd round of antibiotics in 2 months and I'm really worried at this point. RSV is the least of what I am thinking. After PT, I pick fussy up and take her to the doc, who checks her out and gives her a stronger cough/decongestant syrup and then tells me to take her to get a chest xray to rule out anything she may not be hearing on her stethoscope. So I do that, finishing just in the nick of time to get her and me both a happy meal (I devour mine while driving) and get her back to Mom's while I take her 14 yr old brother to the orthodontist. Keep in mind that the other 14 yr old is home sleeping off being sick all night and I'm keeping in touch with her by phone. Which is more than her own mom did, but that's another story. (She was nursing the 16 yr old through her round of it.) I left the house at 8 am and did not get back until about 3pm. Kate is still semi asleep, I put Shel to bed with her care bear, and put Chris on his homework while I wait for the 12 yr old to come home from school, plus try to catch up on the phone calls from while I was gone. Sheesh........Is it too late to not have kids? Just kidding, I wouldn't trade any of them.
Just another day in the life.......
I did accomplish one thing--I finished the cross stitch that Ben gave me for Christmas;now I'm trying to figure out the next project......
Darling hubby is still trying to kick the flu, and I'm trying real hard not to succumb to it. Good news is I don't go back to work til midnight Monday, just ot sit while the floor cleaners do their thing, so I at least have plenty of time to rest.
Maybe......
Can someone tell the kids that?
I keep telling myself that too soon they will be gone with their own lives........then I feel guilty for wanting time to myself...........
Ah well.............

Hi ho Hi ho it's back to work I go.....

Boo Hoo......I like being a stay home mommy. But my physical therapist says it's time to gradually get back to work---part time at first then working into my full time plus hours, eventually with no restrictions. I go back with no lifting, climbing, pushing, pulling, standing or stooping for prolonged periods of time, etc. So what will I be doing? Hell if I know. Probably catching up on emails, receivers, markdowns, etc. We inventory in less than 3 weeks, and that's about the time the dr says I should be good to go. What timing!!

Anyway, it's been fun. Not the pain part, but just being here for my kids. my hubby says he has really liked me being at home (and no he's not a complete caveman) and he worries about how much longer my back will hold out. The dr says how I take care of it willdetermine the next relapse, which we all know will come--but if I am real careful abut keeping up with the strengthening exercises and watching severely what I do with my back, then that only will help lengthen the time between this time out and the next. Of course he also said losing even a little bit of weight will help, too, but I already knew that and have started working on it. Being back at work and not being next to the tv and fridge will be a plus too.

I've already told the kids that just because I may not be here when they get home from school doesn';t mean they can slack. We finally got Chris's grades, I think, back to where they belong, and Ben has maintained his, so I don't want them losing progress. That means I will have to be supermommy, but ok, whatever gets it done.