Secular Confessions

[girlwonder]

Best of luck, Chrissy - and please don't take any chances on driving on a road that is underwater. So easy to be swept away.

We are still okay here - the fire is mainly out of town but it is so smoky here that they are asking everyone to stay inside. I need to spend a few minutes today on making a list of my most important things and gathering as much as I can together just in case.

[missychrissy]

That's so sad Katy. I hope you don't have to evacuate.

I made it home and didn't have to drive through any flooded roads It took me 1.5 hours!! My town is flooded pretty bad so we had to crawl around multiple detours to get everyone to their stops. I was the last one.

The school eventually did allow the buses to transport the kids. I'm glad they didn't have to wait for me because that would have been a nightmare trying to get back across town, then come this way again after snaking through it painfully slowly on the bus. The bus driver said the scenic route was free today lol

[daylilies]

Glad you both are safe-fingers crossed for you Katy.

[Gwenn]

Glad to hear you are both safe!

Bridget, yay for a good meeting, and yay for Savana!

[missychrissy]

We're safe and except for my back yard disappearing we'll remain safe throughout...but I'm not happy at the prospect of possibly being stuck home for the next day or so. I'm going to try whatever I can to make it to work tomorrow.

[3andMe]

I was thinking today about your fires and floods (my secular friends) as I was driving home through my heavily trafficked but very pleasant sunny 76-degree weather. I'm not trying to rub it in, and I'm sorry if it sounds like it -- I was just thinking about how events and weather in the world are so very unreal most of the time unless you know people who are living through them. It took dh 2 hours to drive home from work tonight because of four separate accidents (not related to him) on the way home, and it took me my usual 1 hour, but it was beautiful and sunny, like the best weather we've had since last summer. It is so hard to imagine all this wind and smoke/rain and flooding elsewhere, just like it's been weird to hear everyone talking about record heat as it's been cold here all summer. I hope you all stay safe and sane.

Bridget, and Savana, rock on! DD loves the picture of her eating broccoli. She always comments on it.

I had a really tough day at work, mostly because of sad cases, and I'm thinking about my own mortality.

DS has decided he wants a job where he can earn "thousands of money" so he can buy a "super-fast motorcycle and ride to work on it" despite the fact that he has also talked about wanting 10 kids. I told him that he would have a hard time driving his 10 kids around on a motorcycle, and that maybe he should get a bigger vehicle. I reminded him that I used to have a motorcycle before I had children, and now I have a minivan.

[Bridget]

L, I love the new siggy! What a lovely family you have! That is so cute of Ronin.
Chrissy I hope that you can get to work.
Kai has been really grouchy lately and I think the whole stomach ache thing is mental instead of physical. That doesn't lessen the seriousness of it for me. I've been so busy taking care of Sawyer and so focused on dealing with Savana's obsessive tendencies that I'm afraid Kai gets lost in the mix sometimes. I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen anymore. Last night he said, "I'm sick of this house and all these toys I have." I said, "Are you saying you want to live in a different house?" He said, "No, I'm saying I need new toys."

I went off on dbf a litte bit before I went to bed last night. While making dinner I asked him to help me and he was grumbling about how he can't work in a messy kitchen, which I ignored. I mean, really dude? I'm cleaning and cooking with Sawyer on my hip. Everything takes me a long time. Then later he's grumbling about me leaving my dresser drawer open. I know it's a pet peeve of his and I don't know why I do it but it's not intentional and in the grand scheme of things, big effing deal! Just close it. I ignored that too. But then when we got Savana and Kai to bed and I was sitting on the couch nursing Sawyer and looking forward to some time with dbf, he walk in the living room and steps on toy and makes some snide remark about toys on the floor and I just couldn't handle it anymore. I basically told him to stop his *****ing and moaning and get over himself. If it needs closing, close it. If it needs cleaning, clean it. If it needs hugging, hug it. STFU about it already! God knows I do these all day long and do not need to draw attention to it every single time!
Thank goodness it's thursday and dinner with dad and bro tonight. I need it! We are going to a new oyster bar downtown!

[Ky'sMom]

Kai is hilarious!! Get that boy some toys LOL!!

Glad that you will have some time away from your BF and get to hang with your dad and brother. Nagging is a PITA. My DH stopped nagging so much because I told him he was acting like a woman and he hates being thought of as not manly. He was really upset about it so stopped talking to me for a while. He also does the stereotypical woman, silent treatment thing but I actually lavish those moments because I don't have to hear him b!tch and moan about things. He is better now since I kept reminding him of his stereotypical woman nagging tendencies and how he is similar to his mother. I would also talk to him like a child in order not to get upset about the nagging. He would say "look at all these dishes in the sink" and I would reply "oh, there are a lot of dishes in the sink, why don't you be a good boy and wash them for me." He would get really upset about that and after a while stopped complaining so much. He didn't clean up but at least I didn't have to hear the nagging. Plus my DH makes the funniest, shocked/upset/bothered faces that anyone has ever seen so it tickles me to see what face he is going to make next when I mess with him like that.

Glad to hear that the flooding did not affect you Chrissy. I am always afraid of flooding since we have horrible sewer systems here and people have had flood damage from not extemely large amounts of rain. We get large puddles that look like small ponds in front of our house whenever there is 2 inches or more of rain. People think I'm crazy that I pay for flood insurance even though we don't live in a flood plain but I am just not going to risk damage to our house since I know the sewers are horrible.

Erin

[demigraf]

Lol. Well played, Kai.

My DH tends to lecture more than nag. and his lectures always point out the obvious. and almost every time he lectures me, it's when I'm already admitting I did something I know was stupid. So I end up getting bothered that he doesn't get that I already get it. (Get it?) so nowadays, most of my admissions to DH start with: "Don't lecture me, ok?"

[AmeriBrit]

My reply to my dh when he starts mentioning cleaning is "you live here, too, buddy." He'll usually be all like "I wasn't trying to offend you." Lol.

[daylilies]

Too cute Lydia!

Josh is tired of all his toys too, Bridget...the craft stuff was fun for a couple days but he's bored already. I'm thinking Legos (the smaller kind) and some building type things...he loves science kits so I want to pick up some everyday type stuff we can do experiments with, instead of those kits which are expensive and don't have anything in them that we can't buy at the store, and look up directions on how to do experiments with them.

Glad you're still ok Chrissy, hope you can make it to work. We had a huge downpour this morning and Josh was loving the water coming up as we drove through big puddles.

[3andMe]

I wouldn't even buy a science kit at this point unless you really want to. You can do so many fun things with basic household things, and science kits are pretty useless nowadays.

Have you done this fun milk/soap/food coloring experiment?

Do you have any luck with putting things away for a while and then getting them out again? We also go through phases here. There will be a building phase for a while. Train tracks, foam blocks, putting things together, etc. Then all of that gets boring, and there will be a phase of writing and cutting and gluing and coloring and stickers, and that's all they can think of that they want to do when they have down time. Then all of a sudden if I suggest coloring it's "No, Mom! We don't want to do that!" and all they want to do is play dress-up and pretend.

[Ky'sMom]

Ky never gets bored with his toys. He plays with them until they are pieces of toys and then gets upset when I throw them away. I would give them away but most of the time he has broken them so badly I would feel embarrassed to give them away.

I am SUPER excited because we just created a Robotics team at Ky's school and they will get to compete in the Lego Robotics challenge!! I am probably more excited than Ky. Our first meeting is tomorrow. Ky loves building things and I always have problems trying to find a reputable organization for him to be involved with in this area. This year since he is older we have found more opportunities and he is really enjoying it. He also is in an engineering club this year.

Erin

[Cosmosmom]

Haha, Cosmo has soooo many toys that DH puts them in rotation. Usually she gets about half them in her basket and the other half are put away. He even balances it out so that each batch has the same kinds of twos, like she has two longer snake shaped ones so they get split between the rotations. Or the number of round toys is equal.

Really she does seem excited to see old toys again after a while of them being put away.

Pretty soon her football will be coming out though! She likes to play with it when we have the game on.

[3andMe]

Bridget, you're fond of the Magic Treehouse series, right? I'm thinking of getting some more stories on CD for the twins to listen to at night now that I'm getting them a CD/IPod docking station for their bedroom, and I'm looking at that series right now.

[AmeriBrit]

Erin, that robotics team sounds very fun! I'm looking around at gymnastics clubs for Travis right now because he has a natural talent for it. I want to encourage him to get involved in fun activities from an early age in hopes that he'll stay out of trouble when he's older. I was talking to dh about how playing basketball kept me out of the bad group of kids who were doing drugs and partying all the time.

[3andMe]

Robotics does sound awesome!!!!

The twins have taken a couple of gymnastics classes, 1 dance class, and now I'm signing them up for a swimming class. I remember when I was young I got to take all kinds of different classes all the time. I was always taking something - different dance classes, including tap and ballet and something where I got to pretend to be a tree, gymnastics, swimming, art classes of various kinds, horseback riding classes. I don't know how my parents managed to do it because we were incredibly poor, but I do remember for the horseback riding lessons I worked at the stables mucking out the stalls in exchange for the lessons. I was older then, of course, maybe 10 or 11. And a lot of the earlier classes were probably at community rec centers and college campuses. Still, I really value being able to try a lot of different things and finding out what I liked. I stuck with gymnastics for a long time, but my dabbling in other areas gave me a good background for a lot of projects in life and work.

[daylilies]

I wouldn't even buy a science kit at this point unless you really want to. You can do so many fun things with basic household things, and science kits are pretty useless nowadays.

Have you done this fun milk/soap/food coloring experiment?

Do you have any luck with putting things away for a while and then getting them out again? We also go through phases here. There will be a building phase for a while. Train tracks, foam blocks, putting things together, etc. Then all of that gets boring, and there will be a phase of writing and cutting and gluing and coloring and stickers, and that's all they can think of that they want to do when they have down time. Then all of a sudden if I suggest coloring it's "No, Mom! We don't want to do that!" and all they want to do is play dress-up and pretend.

That's what I was saying about the science kit. You can buy all the items in the store and look up directions for projects online.

I have not tried that experiment myself, but have seen it done. Very cool!

We don't do well with phases because we don't really have a place to put away excess toys. Basically whatever's out is up for grabs.

[Bridget]

Kate we are in the middle of a science experiment now trying to grow bacteria and then testing different things like water, soap, toothpaste to see what kills it. I'll give you yhe ingredients and ratios tomorrow.

L, we LOVE Magic Treehouse! We have read the entire series and are waiting not so patiently for the next book to come out. In the meantime, we're re-reading our faves. Jack and Annie go back in history a lot and around the world and the author does her research well so everything is historically accurate. They've learned so much from it. I highly recommend the audio as well.

[Bridget]

Kate we are in the middle of a science experiment now trying to grow bacteria and then testing different things like water, soap, toothpaste to see what kills it. I'll give you yhe ingredients and ratios tomorrow.

L, we LOVE Magic Treehouse! We have read the entire series and are waiting not so patiently for the next book to come out. In the meantime, we're re-reading our faves. Jack and Annie go back in history a lot and around the world and the author does her research well so everything is historically accurate. They've learned so much from it. I highly recommend the audio as well.

[Bridget]

Kate we are in the middle of a science experiment now trying to grow bacteria and then testing different things like water, soap, toothpaste to see what kills it. I'll give you yhe ingredients and ratios tomorrow.

L, we LOVE Magic Treehouse! We have read the entire series and are waiting not so patiently for the next book to come out. In the meantime, we're re-reading our faves. Jack and Annie go back in history a lot and around the world and the author does her research well so everything is historically accurate. They've learned so much from it. I highly recommend the audio as well.

[Gwenn]

I remember the kids at school last year grew silkworms for a science project. It was really neat! Not exactly a household item, though. They came in kits from the school - I wonder if it would be possible to order a kit off the internet?

[3andMe]

I one time let a whole bunch of tent caterpillars loose in my 5th grade classroom overnight. I wonder if that could have been considered a science experiment? I have always been a terrible bs-er.

[Gwenn]

Yeah, yeah ... it was an EXPERIMENT ... that's it!

[demigraf]

Sorry to change the subject to ME again, but I just told DH I wanted him to take a 3-hr photography class for my birthday present, so he'd learn to use our camera. The pictures he takes are absolutely dreadful. He'd asked me what I wanted and I told him. And then he flat-out refused and said he doesn't need it. Now I'm going to bed annoyed with him. Well, at least I hope he falls asleep before I go in there so I don't have to talk to him.

[demigraf]

For awhile last week, I felt like I had a little crush on him the way I did when we first met, but that dissipated pretty quickly.

[daylilies]

Sorry Myles

That bacteria experiment sounds neat! Not sure about the silkworms though ;)

[Bridget]

Geez, Myles. Why did he ask then? I suppose he hoped you'd say a diamond tiara?

Dbf has this horrible habit of cutting the tags off his sweatpants and leaving a hole in the worst possible place and wearing them around the house with no underwear. (Sorry TMI) This weekend my dad came over and dbf was wearing one of those lovely pairs of pants and painting the boat. We were all sitting down by the lake when dbf was bent over painting with his hind end pointing at us and that god awful hole was glaring in our faces. My dad said, "I have never in my life wished for a beebee gun the way I am wishing for one right now."

[AmeriBrit]

Omg, Bridget, that's hilarious!

Myles, do you think that your dh was offended by that request or does he know that he's crap at taking pictures?

[AmeriBrit]

Omg, Bridget, that's hilarious!

Myles, do you think that your dh was offended by that request or does he know that he's crap at taking pictures?